This is shameful.
A Canadian man who was deported by US officials to Syria, where he was imprisoned and allegedly tortured, has appealed a court ruling preventing him from suing the US.
Maher Arar filed a lawsuit before the US supreme court on Monday, appealing a lower court ruling that rejected his case because it involved national security information.
Arar was arrested by US authorities while transiting through New York's JFK International Airport in 2002, on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis.
He was detained on information shared by Canadian police that suggested he had ties to "terrorist" groups…
...US authorities held him in solitary confinement and interrogated him for nearly two weeks before deporting him to Syria.
He was imprisoned for a year in Damascus, the Syrian capital, during which time he says he was tortured before finally being released and returned to Canada.
A Canadian commission eventually cleared him of any connections to "terrorist" organisations [sic] and concluded that he had been tortured.
He was awarded $10.5m in compensation.
Arar's suit before the Supreme Court questions whether "federal officials who conspired with Syrian officials to subject an individual in US custody to torture in Syria may be sued for damages".
David Cole, a lawyer for Arar, said: "The courts below ruled that federal officials cannot be sued for sending an innocent man to Syria to be tortured because the case would be too sensitive."...
Inserted from <Aljazeera>
I wish Mr. Arar every success here. What Bush and the GOP did to this innocent man is unconscionable. I think we can translate too sensitive in the lower court’s ruling can be translated as too damning to the Bush/GOP regime. Sadly, given the current makeup of SCOTUS, my hopes are not high.
Where is the coverage of this story in US media?
2 comments:
Why of course, Bribery Central, er, the Supreme Court, will be happy to hear Arar's case. Money talks, so as long as he has a few million to throw around, they'll hear him out. Otherwise, he's just wasting the Court's time.
Tom, I thought they do Reich wing legislation from the bench for free.
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