I am happy that someone is still keeping this case alive. Benatta received shabby treatment from Canada and even worse from the US. At least he is back in Canada. I have heard of no action in the US to investigate his treatment. All the flutter of activity by Sen. Leahy and Specter about Arar seems to have died down now as well. Gonzales remains on the hotseat only because of his firings of attorneys.
Somebody should probe this man's case
Asks for asylum in Canada, sent to U.S., jailed for years
Apr 07, 2007 04:30 AM
Thomas Walkom
First, there was the Maher Arar case. A judge who looked into it concluded that the RCMP played a key role in the U.S. decision to send the Canadian computer engineer to Syria for torture.
Then, came the cases of three other Muslim Canadians who say that they too were tortured in Syria with the help of Canadian security services. The claims of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin are being investigated by retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci.
Now, another allegation involving Canada's role in so-called extraordinary renditions has surfaced. This time, it is Canada that is said to have done the rendering. Refugee claimant Benamar Benatta – an Algerian air force officer who says he deserted while on assignment in the United States in order to flee his homeland's decade-long dirty war, and who later sought asylum in Canada – swears in an affidavit filed with the Iacobucci inquiry that on Sept. 12, 2001, Canadian officials transported him across the border against his will and without a legal deportation order.
There are some things about this affair that we know from official U.S. and Canadian records. We know that Benatta, who had arrived in Fort Erie on Sept. 5 and requested political asylum, was in detention awaiting a scheduled immigration review. We also know that the review never happened. Instead, on the day after 9/11, Canadian officials drove him across the border and handed him over to U.S. authorities. They, in turn, transferred him to a jail in Brooklyn, one later criticized by the U.S. justice department for its abuse of Muslim prisoners.
By November, FBI interrogators concluded Benatta was unconnected to terrorism. Still, he remained in jail in Brooklyn for another five months. He says guards would amuse themselves by slamming his head against the wall.
In April 2002, he was charged with minor immigration offences and brought before a judge. The case went on for a year and a half. In the end, federal judge Kenneth Schroeder accused the U.S. government of engaging in "sham" and "subterfuge." He concluded that Benatta had been detained under "extremely harsh conditions" and denied counsel. And he recommended that all charges be dropped. Eventually, reluctantly, the U.S. government agreed.
Even then, Benatta was kept in jail for another 2 1/2 years. In the U.S., his case became a minor cause célèbre, an example of post 9/11 excess. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights weighed in with a 2004 report on Benatta that accused Washington of flouting its international obligations.
Last July, he was brought – in irons – to the border and released back into Canada to pursue his asylum request. He is no longer in jail.
During all of this, no one said much about Canada's role. In his judgment, Schroeder noted only that "as a result of the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, the Canadian authorities alerted United States authorities of defendant's presence and profile ... and returned him to the United States."
Indeed, there seems to be a curious lack of official documentation. We know he entered Canada in 2001 using – as do many refugee claimants – false papers. We know that by that point he had been living illegally in the U.S. for four months. We know, from transcripts of his first appearance before an immigration adjudicator on Sept. 12, that he was being held in detention until his identity could be authenticated and that a review of his case was scheduled for the following week. We also know that his English was not very good but that he declined the offer of an interpreter.
A Canadian government memo filed with the Iacobucci inquiry says that Benatta voluntarily agreed to return to the U.S. But it also notes that Ottawa can find no paper work to support that claim.
In short, we do not know the circumstances of his removal from Canada. Clearly, someone in Canada contacted the Americans to say the Algerian was in custody. Did the U.S. then ask for him back? Did Canada volunteer him? That Benatta would agree to leave Canada in the midst of making a refugee claim and with a hearing scheduled seems implausible. Yet, if he did not agree, who authorized his removal? If this was vigilante deportation, has it become a common practice?
Iacobucci won't investigate Benatta's case. He said this week his mandate is limited. Fine. But someone should. Regardless of the merits of Benatta's refugee claim, the manner in which it and he were treated is manifestly disturbing.
Showing posts with label extra-ordinary rendition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extra-ordinary rendition. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Friday, March 9, 2007
Democrat introduces bill to ban rendition in the US.
Hopefully, this bill will pass into law. It is rather ironic that El Masri was allowed to go to the US. The US has never admitted that his abduction was a case of mistaken identity but then if it were not how could the US let a known terror suspect into the US! Sen. Leahy is still trying to get answers re Arar.
Democrats renew Arar fight
First step in bid to ban `repugnant' practice of sending suspects to other lands for torture
Mar 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Tim Harper
WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON–A Massachusetts Democrat, citing the "travesty'' of Maher Arar, will rekindle a bid today to outlaw the Bush administration practice of outsourcing torture.
Representative Ed Markey says he is optimistic a Democratic-controlled Congress can end the practice known as "extraordinary rendition'' in which detainees are transferred to countries where there are substantial grounds to believe they could be tortured.
The first step to ending the "repugnant and counterproductive'' rendition practice, Markey says, is a tough congressional investigation of the case of the B.C. software engineer.
Markey, under his bill in the House of Representatives, would compel the administration to compile a list of countries known to abuse and torture prisoners and prevent the deportation of anyone to any of them unless the secretary of state certified that the country in question no longer practised abuse.
A "diplomatic assurance'' from a country would no longer suffice.
Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales has cited such an assurance from Syria in attempting to justify Arar's 2002 rendition to Syria from New York's JFK airport, even though that country had been on a state department list of human rights abusers.
"It is simply shocking that today, the United States still refuses to apologize to Maher Arar,'' Markey said yesterday.
Canada issued a formal apology to Arar in January and awarded him $11.5 million in compensation.
Markey said despite the Canadian apology and compensation paid to Arar and his family, the Bush administration is keeping him on a "no-fly list'' without any justification.
The 16-term congressman is leading the effort to force action on Arar in the House of Representatives, while Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania are leading efforts in the Senate.
Markey introduced his Outsourcing of Torture bill in the last Congress, but since then two countries, Germany and Italy, have started proceedings which would end with charges laid against CIA agents for the kidnappings of citizens.
And the European Parliament has since identified more than 1,000 CIA-operated "ghost flights'' that used European airspace and airports between 2001 and 2005.
U.S. President George W. Bush has also acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons and asserted his right to continue to use them.
Rendition victims are finding no satisfaction in U.S. courts.
Last Friday, a federal appeals court in Virginia ruled that American state secrets trumped the rights of a German rendition victim, in a decision that could forebode the difficulty faced by Arar as his case winds its way through the U.S. court system.
Khaled el-Masri, who says he was beaten and sodomized in a so-called "salt pit'' prison in Afghanistan after being kidnapped by CIA agents in Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003, was again denied the opportunity to proceed with a lawsuit against former CIA chief George Tenet and other administration officials.
Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued el-Masri's case, said the court's decision that such a lawsuit would expose "state secrets'' gives virtual immunity to the CIA.
But it does not necessarily sink the hopes of Arar, who is appealing a lower court ruling dismissing his lawsuit in New York.
Arar should get his day in court some time this summer, but legal analysts say he still has hope because his case is being heard in a more liberal circuit and because the judge who dismissed his earlier bid did not invoke the state secrets argument.
Wizner said the ACLU is strongly leaning toward an appeal of the el-Masri case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The question is where will this edifice of secrecy and unaccountability crack?'' Wizner said.
"I think it will be Khaled el-Masri and Maher Arar on Capitol Hill, testifying to Congressional committees, telling them that if innocent people cannot be vindicated in a court of law, there is something wrong in this system.
"I think el-Masri and Arar will be eventually seen as trailblazers and I think the day will come that we will see Maher Arar in Washington, D.C.''
El-Masri, unlike Arar, is allowed to travel to the U.S., apparently because he was never rendered from this country.
He was in the court last November to hear his case argued, and in an emotional piece he wrote in The Los Angeles Times last weekend, he said he hoped Americans would one day "see me as a human being – not a state secret.''
Democrats renew Arar fight
First step in bid to ban `repugnant' practice of sending suspects to other lands for torture
Mar 06, 2007 04:30 AM
Tim Harper
WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON–A Massachusetts Democrat, citing the "travesty'' of Maher Arar, will rekindle a bid today to outlaw the Bush administration practice of outsourcing torture.
Representative Ed Markey says he is optimistic a Democratic-controlled Congress can end the practice known as "extraordinary rendition'' in which detainees are transferred to countries where there are substantial grounds to believe they could be tortured.
The first step to ending the "repugnant and counterproductive'' rendition practice, Markey says, is a tough congressional investigation of the case of the B.C. software engineer.
Markey, under his bill in the House of Representatives, would compel the administration to compile a list of countries known to abuse and torture prisoners and prevent the deportation of anyone to any of them unless the secretary of state certified that the country in question no longer practised abuse.
A "diplomatic assurance'' from a country would no longer suffice.
Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales has cited such an assurance from Syria in attempting to justify Arar's 2002 rendition to Syria from New York's JFK airport, even though that country had been on a state department list of human rights abusers.
"It is simply shocking that today, the United States still refuses to apologize to Maher Arar,'' Markey said yesterday.
Canada issued a formal apology to Arar in January and awarded him $11.5 million in compensation.
Markey said despite the Canadian apology and compensation paid to Arar and his family, the Bush administration is keeping him on a "no-fly list'' without any justification.
The 16-term congressman is leading the effort to force action on Arar in the House of Representatives, while Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania are leading efforts in the Senate.
Markey introduced his Outsourcing of Torture bill in the last Congress, but since then two countries, Germany and Italy, have started proceedings which would end with charges laid against CIA agents for the kidnappings of citizens.
And the European Parliament has since identified more than 1,000 CIA-operated "ghost flights'' that used European airspace and airports between 2001 and 2005.
U.S. President George W. Bush has also acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons and asserted his right to continue to use them.
Rendition victims are finding no satisfaction in U.S. courts.
Last Friday, a federal appeals court in Virginia ruled that American state secrets trumped the rights of a German rendition victim, in a decision that could forebode the difficulty faced by Arar as his case winds its way through the U.S. court system.
Khaled el-Masri, who says he was beaten and sodomized in a so-called "salt pit'' prison in Afghanistan after being kidnapped by CIA agents in Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003, was again denied the opportunity to proceed with a lawsuit against former CIA chief George Tenet and other administration officials.
Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued el-Masri's case, said the court's decision that such a lawsuit would expose "state secrets'' gives virtual immunity to the CIA.
But it does not necessarily sink the hopes of Arar, who is appealing a lower court ruling dismissing his lawsuit in New York.
Arar should get his day in court some time this summer, but legal analysts say he still has hope because his case is being heard in a more liberal circuit and because the judge who dismissed his earlier bid did not invoke the state secrets argument.
Wizner said the ACLU is strongly leaning toward an appeal of the el-Masri case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The question is where will this edifice of secrecy and unaccountability crack?'' Wizner said.
"I think it will be Khaled el-Masri and Maher Arar on Capitol Hill, testifying to Congressional committees, telling them that if innocent people cannot be vindicated in a court of law, there is something wrong in this system.
"I think el-Masri and Arar will be eventually seen as trailblazers and I think the day will come that we will see Maher Arar in Washington, D.C.''
El-Masri, unlike Arar, is allowed to travel to the U.S., apparently because he was never rendered from this country.
He was in the court last November to hear his case argued, and in an emotional piece he wrote in The Los Angeles Times last weekend, he said he hoped Americans would one day "see me as a human being – not a state secret.''
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Why US will not admit Arar's Innocence
This is from the Globe and Mail. Another reason is that Arar still has an appeal pending on his suit against the US government.
A world of Maher Arars
Why won't the U.S. admit Maher Arar's innocence? It may be fear of precedent. Tales of other suspects seized and sent abroad to face torture are beginning to come to light in Europe. This week, those stories helped bring down the Italian government. And as Doug Saunders reports, this could be just the beginning.
DOUG SAUNDERS
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
E-mail Doug Saunders | Read Bio | Latest Columns
On an October evening five years ago, a Gulfstream III executive jet appeared in the sky above Rome and requested a landing at Ciampino Airport, a small military and tourist-flight destination on the ancient Via Appia. On board the 14-seat plane were two pilots, a steward, five CIA agents and a tall, elegant Canadian wearing a green sweater, a pair of jeans and metal shackles.
The Gulfstream, registered to a CIA-connected firm known as Presidential Aviation, was on European soil for exactly 37 minutes. When it had finished refuelling, it left Ciampino at 8:59 p.m. and headed to Amman, Jordan. There, Maher Arar was carried off the plane, beaten, and loaded into a van headed to Damascus, where he would face 10 months and 10 days of horrendous torture.
Those 37 minutes are now coming back to haunt Europe.
Mr. Arar's ordeal, and the wealth of investigations and recriminations that have followed in Canada, has provoked a deep sense of alarm in European politics this week. This Syrian-Canadian's case, the abject apology he received from Prime Minister Stephen Harper last month and the bewildering lack of acknowledgment from Washington, has made a half-dozen governments realize that they may soon face similar public self-examinations.
The possibility, revealed in a European Union report last week, that as many as 20 more Arar-like cases may be emerging within Europe, is souring relations between Europe and the U.S. in anti-terrorism operations, and between European governments and their own people in electoral politics.
Major court cases are under way in Germany and Italy against domestic and U.S. agents for kidnapping citizens and sending them to Muslim countries to be tortured — cases that could implicate senior government officials and tarnish national leaders, as they have in Canada.
It is fair to say that Mr. Arar's spectre claimed its first major victim on Wednesday in Rome, when a parliamentary conflict over co-operation with the U.S. "war on terrorism," tainted by the use of Italian airports to transport Mr. Arar and others to sites of torture, led to the collapse of Italy's government.
Those 37 minutes that Mr. Arar spent on the tarmac in Rome, apparently with the consent of Italian authorities under anti-terrorism agreements with the U.S., have now become part of the controversy. An Italian magistrate, Salvatore Vitello, will travel to Canada later this winter as part of his investigation to determine whether Italians and Americans were guilty of kidnapping.
Across Europe, prosecutors such as Mr. Vitello have shifted their energies from charging potential al-Qaeda terrorists to investigating officials who may have overstepped the bounds of law in their pursuit of antiterrorism.
"We are investigating Mr. Arar's transit through Rome, which is itself a crime if behind it there was an actual crime — that is, if in the U.S. he was illegally kidnapped. If that is the case, if he was kidnapped, then Rome was part of it," Mr. Vitello told The Globe and Mail. "The fact that he was in Rome for those 37 minutes — somebody must have given permission for that."
A year ago, his investigation would have been another colourful sideshow in the flamboyant world of European jurisprudence. But Mr. Arar's precedent has changed that.
In Canada, the Arar case has led to the resignation of RCMP chief Giuliano Zaccardelli, to an apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the payment of $11.5-million in damages to Mr. Arar, and to tensions between a Conservative government and a U.S. Republican administration. Foreign minister Stockwell Day has engaged in a heated showdown with his U.S. counterparts over his demand that Mr. Arar be removed from an American no-fly list. And the Liberal Party, in a forthcoming election, will be confronted with its indifference and possible collusion in the Arar case.
The issue of "extraordinary rendition" — the U.S. practice of seizing suspected terrorists, placing them on unmarked airplanes, and sending them without charge or trial to countries that practice torture — has festered for years in the background of European politics. But it has been an issue that has mainly concerned political parties and activists on the far left, groups that are predictably anti-American. In mainstream politics, it has simply been part of the War on Terrorism's background noise.
There has now been a palpable change. The carte blanche given after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to U.S. authorities to conduct anti-terror operations on European soil has become a menacing liability, and the subject of potentially destructive investigations, in several European countries. Governments are also reducing military co-operation with the U.S: This week saw Britain and Denmark announcing plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, with others expected to follow.
And when the European Parliament last week released a report condemning the 1,245 CIA flights made in Europe and the 20 European citizens subjected to "rendition," the responses no longer fell along predictable left-right lines.
European leaders are now looking nervously to Canada. Mr. Arar's "rendition" in 2002 was probably the first major use of the practice to come to light, and Canada is the first country to have been scorched politically by the explosive discovery that innocent people were tortured as a result of the practice.
Senior Canadian government officials and European Union diplomats have told The Globe and Mail that they believe the U.S. is avoiding any apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing in the Arar case because it could open a Pandora's box of recriminations from Europe, where two cases almost identical to Mr. Arar's are being tried in Germany and Italy and at least 18 more could be pending.
American intelligence officials are facing criminal charges in European courts, and an admission that mistakes have been made could transform transatlantic relations into an enormous forensic investigation, they say.
Europe is now feeling the pain that Canada has undergone, in part as a result of information unearthed in the half-dozen inquiries into Mr. Arar's treatment. In Italy, the fallout has centred on the case of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a Milan cleric also known as Abu Omar, who was seized by CIA agents in 2003 and flown to Cairo, where he was tortured and sexually abused in prison. He was released this week.
Last Friday, Italy had its Arar moment. Milan magistrate Armando Spataro indicted 26 U.S. citizens, including Italian CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady, and five Italians in the rendition of Abu Omar. All of them face charges of kidnapping. The Italian officials include the head of intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, who like the RCMP chief was forced to resign over the case, which is known in Italy as the Imam Rapito ("kidnapped imam") affair.
The U.S. has refused to acknowledge the Italian prosecution or to admit that the rendition occurred. It has also refused the magistrate's request to extradite the defendants (the Italian government has also decided not to press the extradition request at the highest levels). But Italian law allows people to be tried, convicted and sentenced in absentia, so the case will continue, likely revealing embarrassing information about high-level support for the renditions in Italian governments.
In Germany, a case strikingly similar to Mr. Arar's has led to arrest warrants against 13 CIA officers and damning revelations about German complicity in kidnapping. That case involves Khaled el-Masri, who was seized while on vacation in 2003 and sent to Afghanistan for five months (similarly, Mr. Arar, a computer programmer, had been returning from a family vacation). As with Mr. Arar, it appears that Mr. el-Masri has no relationship with terrorism and that his rendition was founded on completely false evidence.
Both Sweden and Portugal are also facing major investigations which accuse their governments of allowing citizens to be seized and sent to Egypt and other countries for torture, without any criminal charges.
Significantly, the case against the U.S. is now being made by judges and officials who have traditionally held pro-American, terror-fighting positions.
Mr. Spataro, the Milan magistrate, is as far from an anti-American firebrand as you can get in Italy: He has spent much of the past 30 years prosecuting terrorist and Mafia groups in Italy, and is not known for a hostility to U.S. interests.
"The job is the same — I have led many investigations against internal terrorism since the early 1970s. Many of my colleagues were killed by terrorist organizations," Mr. Spataro said this week from a Milan office filled with Americana — the wall behind his desk is dominated by a Norman Rockwell print chronicling the integration of southern U.S. schools.
"But we were absolutely sure that it is impossible to fight terrorism without respect for the laws. And with this investigation I hope that we can confirm that it is impossible to win over Islamic terrorism without the respect for law."
The Arar and Abu Omar cases were different in this respect: Along with his indictments of intelligence officials last week, Mr. Spataro laid criminal charges against Abu Omar himself, charging him with membership in a criminal organization (a crime in Italy). Mr. Spataro said that he strongly believes that Abu Omar could have been prosecuted for terrorism far more efficiently if the U.S. practice of rendition had not been followed. But now, he says, the terror-fighters are just as guilty as the alleged terrorist.
"I want to make clear that according to Italian law there is no difference between prosecuting terrorism and prosecuting those who fight terrorism," he said.
That seems to be the bridge that was crossed in Europe this week: It is now the people who were the most stalwart anti-terrorist fighters, the most loyal supporters of George W. Bush's approach to al-Qaeda, who are speaking out against the abuses of that system. With an eye on Canada, the moderates and centre-rightists of Europe are realizing that the U.S. is not prepared to offer a reasonable explanation for those abuses.
That was the case this week with Gijs de Vries, the EU's head of anti-terrrorism, who announced that he will step down in March because he has lost faith in his U.S. partners. He previously had embraced the American approach to counterterrorism, and harshly criticized the European parliament for its rendition-system investigation, with which he refused to co-operate. But on Wednesday, he said that the lack of U.S. explanation for its actions had made it impossible for him to do his job properly.
"The CIA renditions, together with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and the military commissions act, unfortunately have tarnished the image of the United States in the fight against terrorism, among Muslims and non-Muslims," he told reporters. "I hope the United States, now that there is a new political dynamic in the U.S. Congress, can return to a mainstream interpretation of international human rights."
It was this sort of realization, on a larger scale, that led to the collapse of the Italian government on Wednesday. The expansion of a U.S. military base and the presence of Italian troops in Afghanistan were bound to be divisive in Italy, where Communists and other parties of the extreme left always have built a strong base on anti-Americanism. Those parties make up part of the left-wing coalition government of Romano Prodi, which took power from Silvio Berlusconi in last spring's elections.
But the U.S. base became a rallying point for more than just the far left. A public sense that Italian airports and bases have been used for immoral or questionable activities has led the wider Italian public to take part in protests against the expansion, drawing tens of thousands of people.
It created an environment where even the parties of Mr. Berlusconi's right could vote against the pro-American measures without upsetting their constituencies. On Wednesday, it was mainly right-wing politicians who voted against the military-base expansion and the Afghanistan measure, bringing down the government.
Sergio Romano, a former Italian senior diplomat and leading voice of the country's centre-right, told The Globe and Mail that he now believes that the U.S. should not have bases on Italian soil, because it has abused its friendly relationship with its European allies to the point that it can no longer be trusted.
"I believe that the very same people who have been most aware that terrorism is a threat are now the people who are critical in this case of kidnapping," he said from his Milan office. "I think that calling it a 'war on terrorism' has caused a number of mistakes on our part."
It is bizarre to find the likes of Mr. Romano, an ardently pro-American voice, calling for restrictions on U.S. rights in Europe. But with an eye to Mr. Harper's government, European leaders are realizing that it is perilous to support the Bush administration at this awkward political moment.
"I think there is a body of opinion which feels that this kind of thing should be looked at with new eyes," Mr. Romano said "We know very well that the Americans used their bases in Djibouti to attack al-Qaeda in Ethiopia this year . . . If they decide to attack Hezbollah, God forbid, they'll be using Italian bases to do it.
"And we won't be told beforehand. We'll learn the next day. And you become complicit in such things. We do not want that any more."
Doug Saunders is a London-based member of The Globe and Mail's European bureau. His Focus column, Reckoning, will return next week.
A world of Maher Arars
Why won't the U.S. admit Maher Arar's innocence? It may be fear of precedent. Tales of other suspects seized and sent abroad to face torture are beginning to come to light in Europe. This week, those stories helped bring down the Italian government. And as Doug Saunders reports, this could be just the beginning.
DOUG SAUNDERS
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
E-mail Doug Saunders | Read Bio | Latest Columns
On an October evening five years ago, a Gulfstream III executive jet appeared in the sky above Rome and requested a landing at Ciampino Airport, a small military and tourist-flight destination on the ancient Via Appia. On board the 14-seat plane were two pilots, a steward, five CIA agents and a tall, elegant Canadian wearing a green sweater, a pair of jeans and metal shackles.
The Gulfstream, registered to a CIA-connected firm known as Presidential Aviation, was on European soil for exactly 37 minutes. When it had finished refuelling, it left Ciampino at 8:59 p.m. and headed to Amman, Jordan. There, Maher Arar was carried off the plane, beaten, and loaded into a van headed to Damascus, where he would face 10 months and 10 days of horrendous torture.
Those 37 minutes are now coming back to haunt Europe.
Mr. Arar's ordeal, and the wealth of investigations and recriminations that have followed in Canada, has provoked a deep sense of alarm in European politics this week. This Syrian-Canadian's case, the abject apology he received from Prime Minister Stephen Harper last month and the bewildering lack of acknowledgment from Washington, has made a half-dozen governments realize that they may soon face similar public self-examinations.
The possibility, revealed in a European Union report last week, that as many as 20 more Arar-like cases may be emerging within Europe, is souring relations between Europe and the U.S. in anti-terrorism operations, and between European governments and their own people in electoral politics.
Major court cases are under way in Germany and Italy against domestic and U.S. agents for kidnapping citizens and sending them to Muslim countries to be tortured — cases that could implicate senior government officials and tarnish national leaders, as they have in Canada.
It is fair to say that Mr. Arar's spectre claimed its first major victim on Wednesday in Rome, when a parliamentary conflict over co-operation with the U.S. "war on terrorism," tainted by the use of Italian airports to transport Mr. Arar and others to sites of torture, led to the collapse of Italy's government.
Those 37 minutes that Mr. Arar spent on the tarmac in Rome, apparently with the consent of Italian authorities under anti-terrorism agreements with the U.S., have now become part of the controversy. An Italian magistrate, Salvatore Vitello, will travel to Canada later this winter as part of his investigation to determine whether Italians and Americans were guilty of kidnapping.
Across Europe, prosecutors such as Mr. Vitello have shifted their energies from charging potential al-Qaeda terrorists to investigating officials who may have overstepped the bounds of law in their pursuit of antiterrorism.
"We are investigating Mr. Arar's transit through Rome, which is itself a crime if behind it there was an actual crime — that is, if in the U.S. he was illegally kidnapped. If that is the case, if he was kidnapped, then Rome was part of it," Mr. Vitello told The Globe and Mail. "The fact that he was in Rome for those 37 minutes — somebody must have given permission for that."
A year ago, his investigation would have been another colourful sideshow in the flamboyant world of European jurisprudence. But Mr. Arar's precedent has changed that.
In Canada, the Arar case has led to the resignation of RCMP chief Giuliano Zaccardelli, to an apology from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the payment of $11.5-million in damages to Mr. Arar, and to tensions between a Conservative government and a U.S. Republican administration. Foreign minister Stockwell Day has engaged in a heated showdown with his U.S. counterparts over his demand that Mr. Arar be removed from an American no-fly list. And the Liberal Party, in a forthcoming election, will be confronted with its indifference and possible collusion in the Arar case.
The issue of "extraordinary rendition" — the U.S. practice of seizing suspected terrorists, placing them on unmarked airplanes, and sending them without charge or trial to countries that practice torture — has festered for years in the background of European politics. But it has been an issue that has mainly concerned political parties and activists on the far left, groups that are predictably anti-American. In mainstream politics, it has simply been part of the War on Terrorism's background noise.
There has now been a palpable change. The carte blanche given after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to U.S. authorities to conduct anti-terror operations on European soil has become a menacing liability, and the subject of potentially destructive investigations, in several European countries. Governments are also reducing military co-operation with the U.S: This week saw Britain and Denmark announcing plans to withdraw troops from Iraq, with others expected to follow.
And when the European Parliament last week released a report condemning the 1,245 CIA flights made in Europe and the 20 European citizens subjected to "rendition," the responses no longer fell along predictable left-right lines.
European leaders are now looking nervously to Canada. Mr. Arar's "rendition" in 2002 was probably the first major use of the practice to come to light, and Canada is the first country to have been scorched politically by the explosive discovery that innocent people were tortured as a result of the practice.
Senior Canadian government officials and European Union diplomats have told The Globe and Mail that they believe the U.S. is avoiding any apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing in the Arar case because it could open a Pandora's box of recriminations from Europe, where two cases almost identical to Mr. Arar's are being tried in Germany and Italy and at least 18 more could be pending.
American intelligence officials are facing criminal charges in European courts, and an admission that mistakes have been made could transform transatlantic relations into an enormous forensic investigation, they say.
Europe is now feeling the pain that Canada has undergone, in part as a result of information unearthed in the half-dozen inquiries into Mr. Arar's treatment. In Italy, the fallout has centred on the case of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a Milan cleric also known as Abu Omar, who was seized by CIA agents in 2003 and flown to Cairo, where he was tortured and sexually abused in prison. He was released this week.
Last Friday, Italy had its Arar moment. Milan magistrate Armando Spataro indicted 26 U.S. citizens, including Italian CIA station chief Robert Seldon Lady, and five Italians in the rendition of Abu Omar. All of them face charges of kidnapping. The Italian officials include the head of intelligence, Nicolo Pollari, who like the RCMP chief was forced to resign over the case, which is known in Italy as the Imam Rapito ("kidnapped imam") affair.
The U.S. has refused to acknowledge the Italian prosecution or to admit that the rendition occurred. It has also refused the magistrate's request to extradite the defendants (the Italian government has also decided not to press the extradition request at the highest levels). But Italian law allows people to be tried, convicted and sentenced in absentia, so the case will continue, likely revealing embarrassing information about high-level support for the renditions in Italian governments.
In Germany, a case strikingly similar to Mr. Arar's has led to arrest warrants against 13 CIA officers and damning revelations about German complicity in kidnapping. That case involves Khaled el-Masri, who was seized while on vacation in 2003 and sent to Afghanistan for five months (similarly, Mr. Arar, a computer programmer, had been returning from a family vacation). As with Mr. Arar, it appears that Mr. el-Masri has no relationship with terrorism and that his rendition was founded on completely false evidence.
Both Sweden and Portugal are also facing major investigations which accuse their governments of allowing citizens to be seized and sent to Egypt and other countries for torture, without any criminal charges.
Significantly, the case against the U.S. is now being made by judges and officials who have traditionally held pro-American, terror-fighting positions.
Mr. Spataro, the Milan magistrate, is as far from an anti-American firebrand as you can get in Italy: He has spent much of the past 30 years prosecuting terrorist and Mafia groups in Italy, and is not known for a hostility to U.S. interests.
"The job is the same — I have led many investigations against internal terrorism since the early 1970s. Many of my colleagues were killed by terrorist organizations," Mr. Spataro said this week from a Milan office filled with Americana — the wall behind his desk is dominated by a Norman Rockwell print chronicling the integration of southern U.S. schools.
"But we were absolutely sure that it is impossible to fight terrorism without respect for the laws. And with this investigation I hope that we can confirm that it is impossible to win over Islamic terrorism without the respect for law."
The Arar and Abu Omar cases were different in this respect: Along with his indictments of intelligence officials last week, Mr. Spataro laid criminal charges against Abu Omar himself, charging him with membership in a criminal organization (a crime in Italy). Mr. Spataro said that he strongly believes that Abu Omar could have been prosecuted for terrorism far more efficiently if the U.S. practice of rendition had not been followed. But now, he says, the terror-fighters are just as guilty as the alleged terrorist.
"I want to make clear that according to Italian law there is no difference between prosecuting terrorism and prosecuting those who fight terrorism," he said.
That seems to be the bridge that was crossed in Europe this week: It is now the people who were the most stalwart anti-terrorist fighters, the most loyal supporters of George W. Bush's approach to al-Qaeda, who are speaking out against the abuses of that system. With an eye on Canada, the moderates and centre-rightists of Europe are realizing that the U.S. is not prepared to offer a reasonable explanation for those abuses.
That was the case this week with Gijs de Vries, the EU's head of anti-terrrorism, who announced that he will step down in March because he has lost faith in his U.S. partners. He previously had embraced the American approach to counterterrorism, and harshly criticized the European parliament for its rendition-system investigation, with which he refused to co-operate. But on Wednesday, he said that the lack of U.S. explanation for its actions had made it impossible for him to do his job properly.
"The CIA renditions, together with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and the military commissions act, unfortunately have tarnished the image of the United States in the fight against terrorism, among Muslims and non-Muslims," he told reporters. "I hope the United States, now that there is a new political dynamic in the U.S. Congress, can return to a mainstream interpretation of international human rights."
It was this sort of realization, on a larger scale, that led to the collapse of the Italian government on Wednesday. The expansion of a U.S. military base and the presence of Italian troops in Afghanistan were bound to be divisive in Italy, where Communists and other parties of the extreme left always have built a strong base on anti-Americanism. Those parties make up part of the left-wing coalition government of Romano Prodi, which took power from Silvio Berlusconi in last spring's elections.
But the U.S. base became a rallying point for more than just the far left. A public sense that Italian airports and bases have been used for immoral or questionable activities has led the wider Italian public to take part in protests against the expansion, drawing tens of thousands of people.
It created an environment where even the parties of Mr. Berlusconi's right could vote against the pro-American measures without upsetting their constituencies. On Wednesday, it was mainly right-wing politicians who voted against the military-base expansion and the Afghanistan measure, bringing down the government.
Sergio Romano, a former Italian senior diplomat and leading voice of the country's centre-right, told The Globe and Mail that he now believes that the U.S. should not have bases on Italian soil, because it has abused its friendly relationship with its European allies to the point that it can no longer be trusted.
"I believe that the very same people who have been most aware that terrorism is a threat are now the people who are critical in this case of kidnapping," he said from his Milan office. "I think that calling it a 'war on terrorism' has caused a number of mistakes on our part."
It is bizarre to find the likes of Mr. Romano, an ardently pro-American voice, calling for restrictions on U.S. rights in Europe. But with an eye to Mr. Harper's government, European leaders are realizing that it is perilous to support the Bush administration at this awkward political moment.
"I think there is a body of opinion which feels that this kind of thing should be looked at with new eyes," Mr. Romano said "We know very well that the Americans used their bases in Djibouti to attack al-Qaeda in Ethiopia this year . . . If they decide to attack Hezbollah, God forbid, they'll be using Italian bases to do it.
"And we won't be told beforehand. We'll learn the next day. And you become complicit in such things. We do not want that any more."
Doug Saunders is a London-based member of The Globe and Mail's European bureau. His Focus column, Reckoning, will return next week.
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