Last week the Supreme Court of the United States of America refused to hear my case. This eliminates any remaining hope for me of obtaining justice through the U.S. judicial system against US officials who sent me to Syria to be tortured.
Let me emphasize the fact that my case is not an isolated one. My case is unique in the sense that I was the only person who was rendered from US soil. But hundreds of other human beings have been rendered by the CIA and handed over to brutal regimes. No one knows how many of these people have died under torture or completely disappeared. Those of us who were lucky "survived" and were released, but now live with psychological and physical scars.
In times of turmoil and crisis, such as the ones we have been living since 9/11, the judicial system is supposed to do exactly the opposite of what it has done: it is supposed to stand up to the executive branch and make sure the constitution is respected. Unfortunately, the judicial system has abandoned its sacred role of ensuring that no one is above the law. In doing so it has given the executive branch the green light to continue abusing people's basic human rights. As a result of this willful blindness, it has put the world's peace and order in danger.
A lot of people had high hopes when Obama took his oath to uphold the Constitution. It later became clear that his administration was no better than that of his predecessor. Here we are, 18 months after he took office, and Guantánamo is still open, renditions are still being carried out and illegal assassinations by drone planes have increased tenfold. This latter tactic has claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians so far. One can only wonder what is next in the so-called "war on terror."
What is the solution to this state of lawlessness that the world is experiencing today? In my opinion, the judicial system can, and should, exercise its full powers. American Judges should learn lessons from their Italian counterparts, who did not listen to their political masters when it came to laying charges against the CIA officers who illegally kidnapped an Egyptian cleric on Italian soil and rendered him to torture in Egypt.
The RCMP, the Canadian federal police force, has launched a criminal investigation into my case. They have been collecting evidence with the view to charge those Syrian and American officials who were responsible for my torture. Whether charges will be brought against these officials will be something I and other human rights advocates will be watching very closely.
History has taught us that civilizations prosper when they make sure that justice prevails. Those civilizations that forgot this important lesson saw their might vanish in the eyes of people. I have no choice but to agree with Benjamin Franklin, who once wrote, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Michael Roth: The Arar Affair: Shades of Dreyfus
The failure to give Maher Arar his day in court is another shameful episode of how our highest court and the current administration continue to protect the abusers of human rights and of the rule of law who ran amok in the Bush years.
Amrit Singh: Accountability for Torture: Europe Vs. United States
While the United States may not want to acknowledge how it tore El-Masri's life apart, European pressure may well compel the U.S. to finally come clean.
Daphne Eviatar: US Refusal to Investigate Torture Lets Other Countries Do it for Us
In only looking forward on torture, not back, the Obama administration is reneging on its obligations under the Convention Against Torture, which demands both that torturers be held accountable and that victims receive remedies.
Maher Arar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Annals of Justice: Outsourcing Torture : The New Yorker
Supreme Court should have intervened in Maher Arar case - Los ...
Supreme Court: Torture and Rendition Victim Maher Arar Cannot Sue ...
Maher Arar Loses 'Last Hope' in US Court Ruling | CommonDreams.org
Supreme Court refuses Maher Arar torture case - CSMonitor.com
The state of this nation is indeed pathetic. The corporate elite along with their toadies in the Pentagon and Congress can do as they please, while people die and suffer! The good book teaches us that the love of money is the root of all evil, so true. So very true.
I was and still am ashamed of my Nation and fellow citizens who claim higher morality, while practicing the morality of sociopaths. I only wish there was a away to help people see that justice and morality (as well as our personal safety) are the same and must come from the same ethics and humanity we personally cultivate.
I wish you good luck and a good, happy life despite your inability to achieve public justice.
When corruption finally leaks into the highest justice system in the land, as it has recently, its a signal that the game of this nation is just about over and done.
There will be fighting in the streets, there will be a civil war once again but this time the outcome will be in favor of the people not the government. The moment is arriving.
You can only abuse and misuse the common people so much... and this government and the corporations have gone beyond the limits of human tolerance. Using our boys and girls to murder the neighbors and steal their property is morally and ethically wrong but this is exactly what the government/corporations are doing and have done.
The refusal of the Supreme Court to hear this case is in fact just another slap in the face of the people...
Get REAL!
Wake up!
Every Supreme Court Justice IS APPOINTED for LIFE by the corrupt POLITICIANS so that we remember them and suffer.
It is irrelevant whether the POLITICIANS (elected or defeated) are Democrats or republicans for they are the same players in a MUSICAL CHAIR game!
...and it is getting worse... With the appointment of Kagan; we are going to get stuck with the youngest Justice for FIFTY Years..... We might as well become a MONARCHY so that the people revolt and reenact the French Revolution.....
I now know that 85% of the detainees were never caught by our CIA but sold by anyone willing to sacrifice another man's life and freedom for a lot of money.
What my government did and still does makes me ashamed and heartbroken because we are a great people. - A great people led by the most vile criminals this planet has ever seen. And I do not speak of politicians even though they sell our world to the highest bidder. I mean the ones who buy politicians with the money they steal from us.
I am very sorry for your plight and the ongoing crime of taking your human rights and calling it law.
Unless you're the mainstream media. Then you don't connect the dots, not if you want your job. When the heads of the top twenty economies announce a goal to cut their deficits in half by 2012. there's not even a tuneless whistle. Not one asks, what this means to schools, unemployment insurance, healthcare, or vital infrastructure repairs in these countries. Now what's the new plan to jump-start the green-economy and save the planet? It's another day and different news.
What's this to do with an innocent foreign citizen, between flights in New York, being abducted by our government's agents and sent to Syria to be tortured? Just that, la la la, there's been a silent coup in the land of freedom and liberty. Abracadabra! Justice for all becomes justice for some. Our constitution goes up in the same puff of smoke as the above. Poof!
Now please show me "many times", where Obama - who just so you know, I do not like as a president - explicitly wrote that he wants the American constitution "rewritten" so that the powers of the government - I presume over the people - can be "expanded". Sources, please.
Or, "do not criticize what you don't understand".
Since when is there peace and order in the world?
Take the log out of your own eye before you start worrying about what's in Syria's. At least they don't pretend to be a modern democracy with the rule of law and good christian family values. America does, and the play-act is wearing thin.
If the criminal Serb regime under Milosevich can be taken to Hague to be judged and sentenced, then leading Bush officials should be taken there as well. And, I might add, so too should any Obama officials who wish to continue the practice of extraordinary rendition.
The job of the supreme court is to redress instances where the government has behaved illegally, as it did, clearly, here. As it still regularly does. So, I agree, the Obama government is culpable. But it's ultimately only the supreme court that can make that culpability a legal fact. The right-wing activist zealots, who have been placed on the supreme court through a diabolical political conspiracy that aims to undermine personal liberty and civil rights, have betrayed their oath to the constitution in favor of their oath to fellow conspirators.
That's what Americans need to appreciate. They need to ask, who can now make the culpability of the supreme court traitors a legal fact? In the real world, even good freedom loving American governments, often overstep their powers. The Lincoln government certainly did, as did the FDR government. However, this tendency had been foreseen when the USA was established. Now what?
As signatories and as a matter of law we are bound by federal, state, international laws & treaties: 113C of the US Criminal Code, War Crimes Act, Geneva Conventions, UN Convention Against Torture, Article VI of US Constitution, UCMJ to investigate whether crimes against humanity and/or war crimes were committed.
Given the overwhelming evidence showing prisoners had been waterboarded, beat, hung by their arms, deprived of sleep, forced into small boxes, shackled in contorted body positions, sexually humiliated and the dozens more who died after being kicked or beaten to death appear to qualify as war crimes under the G C:
"no physical or mental torture nor any form of coercion may be inflicted to secure information" and any prisoners refusing to co-operate "may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind" certainly brings to question how the SCOTUS reached their decision.
What we believe is reflected in what we do, not what we say. All human beings, in fairness and justice, deserve to be treated with a modicum of respect, dignity and given their day in court. It's not a privilege, it is the law, or so I thought.
In my eyes, the Robert's Court failed humanity. Needless to say, this is not one of America's finest moments.
If only America showed the same respect for those treaties in the application as they do at the signing ceremonies, the military and political culture that allowed this (and Abu Graihb, and renditions, and Camp No, and waterboarding, and Nicaragua, and Bay of Pigs, and...) would have been stamped out long ago.
"In my eyes, the Robert's Court failed humanity. Needless to say, this is not one of America's finest moments. "
Indeed. I always think of America's late arrival in WW2 as being one of its finest moments... are there some more recent examples I can use to set my 'finest moment' scale?