A Judicial Green Light for Torture (NYT Sun Edit)

[kpete]

Editorial
A Judicial Green Light for Torture


Published: February 26, 2006
The administration's tendency to dodge accountability for lawless actions by resorting to secrecy and claims of national security is on sharp display in the case of a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, who spent months under torture because of United States action. A federal trial judge in Brooklyn has refused to stand up to the executive branch, in a decision that is both chilling and ripe for prompt overturning.

Mr. Arar, a 35-year-old software engineer whose case has been detailed in a pair of columns by Bob Herbert, was detained at Kennedy Airport in 2002 while on his way home from a family vacation. He was held in solitary confinement in a Brooklyn detention center and interrogated without proper access to legal counsel. Finally, he was shipped off to a Syrian prison. There, he was held for 10 months in an underground rat-infested dungeon and brutally tortured because officials suspected that he was a member of Al Qaeda. All this was part of a morally and legally unsupportable United States practice known as "extraordinary rendition," in which the federal government outsources interrogations to regimes known to use torture and lacking fundamental human rights protections.

The maltreatment of Mr. Arar would be reprehensible — and illegal under the United States Constitution and applicable treaties — even had the suspicions of terrorist involvement proven true. But no link to any terrorist organization or activity emerged, which is why the Syrians eventually released him. Mr. Arar then sued for damages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/opinion/26sun1.html?ex=1298610000&en=dbf25cee781976ac&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[ThomCat]

1. I love the Strong Language in this.

They state outright that what happened is reprehensible and illegal. They use the terms morally and ilegally unsupportable. They state clearly that he was tortured because of United States action and then make the point later than he had no link to any terrorist organization.

Finally, the NY Times (other than just Paul Krugman) is making some effort to hold this administration accountable. It's about damned time.