A Look at U.S. Rendition Policy
CLANCY: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to YOUR WORLD TODAY. I'm Jim Clancy.</s>VASSILEVA: I'm Ralitsa Vassileva. Here are some of the top stories we're following this hour. The leader of the British House in Commons is in hot water for saying Muslim women should think twice about wearing a veil. Jack Straw says veils make community relations, quote, "more difficult," because they act as, quote, "a visible statement of separation." Straw insists he defends Muslims' rights to wear veils.</s>CLANCY: The United Nations Security Council expected to formally warn North Korea don't test a nuclear weapon. The White House says such a test would be unacceptable and would destabilize the region. South Korea's military is on alert for the test. Some think it could be as soon as this weekend.</s>VASSILEVA: Iran's nuclear ambitions are just one of the focal points at a meeting of six top world powers in London. Foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany are discussing ways to handle Iran's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program.</s>CLANCY: We're going to turn now and spend a little bit of time on an important subject, the controversial weapon in the U.S. war on terror. Washington calls it rendition. Human rights groups say it's nothing more than outsourcing torture. Rendition -- and let's explain what it actually is -- it involves the seizing of terror suspects in a country outside the U.S. and then transferring them to a third country where there aren't laws about just how tough they can be in interrogation. The CIA practice started in 1995. It was authorized by then President Bill Clinton. It's unclear how many suspects have been rendered. We will hear from both sides the rendition debate shortly.</s>VASSILEVA: But first, we examine the case of Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar. By Washington's definition, Arar was not technically rendered because he was in the U.S. when he was sent back to Syria as a terror suspect. Still, his case is being held up as an example of how U.S. policy flagrantly flaunts international law. Bronwyn Adcock has Arar's story.</s>BRONWYN ADCOCK, CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Canadian Maher Arar is an innocent man. Yet based on unfounded suspicions, he was sent for ten months of hell in a Syrian prison, where he was tortured.</s>MAHER ARAR, FORMER TORTURE DETAINEE: Let me tell you something that happened during the interrogation. I urinated myself twice during the interrogation. I don't know what that shows, but my nerves, like, I can't control myself. It's so scary when you hear people being tortured. It's so scary when you are beaten. And I would just say anything -- anything they want -- just to stop the torture.</s>ADCOCK: Maher Arar was sent to Syria by United States government officials who believed he had information about terrorist suspects. Ahar's lawyers believe the U.S. sent him for the purpose of interrogation under torture.</s>BILL GOODMAN, MAHER ARAR'S ATTORNEY: They wanted to torture him. But they didn't quite have the wherewithal, the guts, let's say, to do what they really intended to do -- was to torture this man. So they franchised the torture. They knew the Syrians wouldn't blink at torturing someone. And the purpose was, supposedly, to get information from him about his connections with al Qaeda, which, by the way, are totally nonexistent.</s>ADCOCK: Maher Ahar is not the only case of what's known as extraordinary rendition, a secretive U.S. policy of outsourcing torture to countries like Syria and Egypt. It's proving embarrassing and controversial for the U.S. government. Arar was the first to sue the government over the practice. In clear victory for the Bush administration, his case was thrown out of court.</s>GOODMAN: I think some of our clients are terrified of coming back to the United States, and even though...</s>ADCOCK: Bill Goodman says this gives a green light for the government to continue with extraordinary rendition.</s>GOODMAN: If they can get away with doing it to Maher Arar, they're going to get away with doing it to whoever they choose to do it to, whether he be a non-citizen or a citizen, in my humble opinion. Or she. And that person will -- who's sent to Syria today can be sent to the Sudan or Somalia tomorrow, or who knows where the next day.</s>ADCOCK: Maher Arar's terrifying journey began in the summer of 2002, when he was detained while in transit at JFK Airport in New York. He was held here in a Brooklyn detention center for two weeks, with little access to a lawyer. He was accused of being a member of al Qaeda and told he was to be deported -- not to Canada, but to Syria, the country of his birth.</s>ARAR: And I told him, I said, listen, you're going to send me to a country that you know does -- has no law, they don't follow the law. If you send me there, I'm going to be tortured. So I raised the torture issue many times.</s>ADCOCK: Despite his pleas and with no legal extradition process, Arar was put on board a Gulf Stream jet. It's now known that these planes have been widely used in America's rendition program, taking detainees everywhere from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. Once in Syria, Maher Arar's worst fears were realized.</s>ARAR: They would basically put me back to the interrogation and they would beat me again like three or four times with a cable. And now they started beating me on my shoulder, on my back, on my hips, on -- mostly. And they would ask questions. Again, sometimes they would beat first and then ask second.</s>ADCOCK: Arar says in Syria, he was asked identical questions to those asked when he was detained in the U.S., leading him to believe that his Syrian interrogators were acting behalf of the United States.</s>ARAR: And I asked the colonel, actually -- I said, you guys know I have nothing to do with any allegations the Americans have against me. Why don't you release me? And he said, oh, you're going home very soon. Now whether I believe him or not -- because they lie to me all the times, right? But he could -- I could tell in their eyes that they had no interest in me.</s>ADCOCK: Syrian officials have since confirmed that they only took Arar because the Americans requested it. Maher Arar was released home to Canada after ten months, time spent in a coffin-sized cell in solitary confinement. He's never been charged with anything. "Dateline" caught up with Maher Arar again after he'd received the news about the court's decision.</s>ARAR: When a human being is wronged, the first place he would expect to go is to the justice system. And in my case, that's what -- I exactly did. And I filed a lawsuit two years ago. And I wanted to held the people accountable. And all of a sudden, the judge, he's just saying, you know, good luck. That's what's, you know, scary about it.</s>ADCOCK: In his court case against the U.S. government, Arar asked for compensation and a statement that what happened to him was unlawful. The case was dismissed, largely because of national security and foreign policy considerations. The judge said taht he couldn't declare what happened to Arar was illegal because it could threaten the security of America.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "A judge who declares on his or her own Article III authority that the policy of extraordinary rendition is under all circumstances unconstitutional must acknowledge that such a ruling can have the most serious of consequences to our foreign relations or national security or both."</s>ADCOCK: The judge said that such decisions are for the government, not the judiciary.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The task of balancing individual rights against national security concerns is one that courts should not undertake without the guidance or the authority of the coordinate branches, in whom the constitution imposes responsibility for our foreign affairs and national security. Those branches have the responsibility to determine whether judicial oversight is appropriate."</s>ADCOCK: Arar's lawyers are shocked by the judgment. Bill Goodman says judicial oversight of the government is an essential part of democracy.</s>GOODMAN: This is a principle that goes back to the magna carta, at least to the 1213, the 13th century and probably beyond. But if the courts cannot get involved and cannot demand answers from the executive branch and cannot demand answers from the executive branch, and cannot tell the executive branch that it cannot abuse its power, than nobody can. We're setting ourselves up for an executive branch which will -- which is prepared to, will likely and undoubtedly, in my opinion, will abuse its power.</s>ADCOCK: Bill Goodman agrees it's important to consider national security, but not at any cost.</s>GOODMAN: I think they have to be taken into consideration in determining whether or not what the government has done is reasonable. But I do not think that they're a trump card and can be played and as a result no court can get involved in deciding whether or not somebody's rights have been violated. That would be a violation of the most basic and fundamental democratic principles of the American Constitution.</s>ADCOCK: This is clearly not the view of the judge, though. He went as far as saying that the judiciary doesn't have the right to hold the government to account over policies like rendition, even if the law is broken.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Judges should not, in the absence of explicit direction by Congress, hold officials who carry out such policies liable for damages, even if such conduct violates our treaty obligations or customary international law.</s>ADCOCK: The Ahar judgment is clearly written in the context of America being in the middle of a so-called war on terror. It frequently cites the importance of national security. Ahar's lawyers say this has led the judge to act in fear.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fear of terror, you know, fear there will be another terrorist attack. And that if there is, that these opinions that the judges will be blamed because they let the terrorists get away with it, because they -- they tied the hands of the government in fighting the war on terror. Which, of course, this isn't. This is demanding of the government that it do what the Constitution compels it to.</s>ADCOCK: For Mahar Ahar, his only connection with terrorists is that he was mistaken for one. It's a devastating blow.</s>AHAR: You have to understand the context in which all of this happened, you know. I was a successful engineer before. I was living a normal life. I had everything I wanted, you know. And all of a sudden, I am put out a job. I am still -- I still have scars, mostly psychological scars, and I'm still with the nightmares. I'm still with -- suffering from psychological effects. And financially, I have -- it's very, very, you know, bad situation. And that's what's disappointing about this. Not only, like, it's giving the Bush administration the green light to continue in their evil practice, but also it's very destructive for me on a personal level.</s>CLANCY: All right. A day in court. Maher Arar has decided he's going to appeal the U.S. court decision. CNN invited U.S. officials to come here and talk with us. They had to decline, they said. The Justice Department did issue a statement, saying, we're having ongoing litigation with Mr. Arar. The Department of Justice cannot say anything outside of court. A U.S. State Department official did say the U.S. had no intention of mistreating Arar.</s>SEAN MCCORMACK, STATE DEPT. SPOKESMAN: My understanding of this is that he was -- at the time, U.S. officials made a determination that he posed -- based on the information that they had that he posed a threat, so he was removed from the U.S. to a country of his citizenship, Syria. It was done after there were assurances that his treatment would meet the standards of the Geneva Conventions, meaning that in the sense that he was not going to be maltreated. We had to have a reasonable expectation that he was not going to be tortured or maltreated.</s>CLANCY: Well, what do the Syrians say then? Well, we contacted the Syrian government. Its ambassador to the United States says Arar was not treated badly in its care, and strongly contests his allegations that he was tortured. As for the Canadians, an exhaustive inquiry there came to a close recently and it exonerated Maher Arar.</s>VASSILEVA: Well, when we return, much more on the rendition controversy, including the views of two experts who debate the case of Arar. Were his civil rights trampled on? We'll get their views, coming up.