Editorial: A tale of torture

Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2006 | 7:26 a.m.

A Canadian inquiry says that its intelligence officials gave American agents erroneous information about a Muslim Canadian citizen, whom U.S. officials then arrested and sent to Syria where he was tortured for nearly a year.

Results of the 2 1/2-year investigation, released Monday, show that Maher Arar - a then-34-year-old Syrian native who had immigrated to Canada with his family at age 17 - was falsely labeled "an Islamic extremist" and detained as he changed planes in New York City in September 2002. Arar was shackled and spirited off to Syria for interrogation under the secretive U.S. "extraordinary rendition" program.

It has been suggested that Arar was taken to Syria because he was born there. But the true reason remains unclear. The U.S. State Department has publicly renounced Syria's poor treatment of prisoners, the Canadian inquiry notes, and such reports have revealed that Syrian intelligence agencies routinely hold prisoners in secret "for purposes of interrogation using torture."

Arar was repeatedly punched, beaten with a frayed electrical cord and threatened with electrocution. For his 10 months he was confined to a cell 7 feet high, 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, where he had only a bottle for water and one in which to urinate. Syrian officials finally confirmed he had no links to al-Qaida or other terrorist groups and set him free.

While the report focused on Canadian officials' roles, it also recommended that the U.S. rendition policy be reviewed and stated that American authorities never gave Canadian officials "any indication of their intention to send Mr. Arar to Syria."

That this warrantless arrest and unspeakable abuse could be heaped onto any innocent person with assistance from the U.S. government is unthinkable. And yet the Bush administration is this week trying to recast the nation's rules regarding what he calls "alternative interrogation techniques" that likely fall one step above torture. Worse, this Canadian report shows that it may not matter how the U.S. government defines torture. If agents can't torture on U.S. soil, they have shown that they are not above having it done elsewhere, in secret.