- Reaction score
- 35
- Points
- 560
Interesting tie in to another case:
http://ezralevant.com/2009/01/charles-adler-show-today.html
http://ezralevant.com/2009/01/charles-adler-show-today.html
Charles Adler Show today
By Ezra Levant on January 20, 2009 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | Trackback
I'll be on Charles Adler's national radio show today at 4 p.m. ET, 2 p.m. MT, to talk about Omar Khadr's statement that Maher Arar was indeed at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
I've just re-read Kevin Steel's story in the Western Standard. It's amazing reading. Here are some excerpts:
The commission, headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor, ran for two-and-a-half years and cost taxpayers $23 million. Yet in all that time and for all that money, no medical evidence was presented that demonstrated Arar had been physically tortured. No doctor testified. A psychiatrist did testify about the psychological effects of torture, but on physical torture, none.
Arar was never cross-examined on his allegations because he did not testify at the commission that bears his name.
...While he was imprisoned, Arar, who was closely monitored by the Syrians, made only one negative statement to the Canadian consular officials who visited him. On Aug. 14, 2003, he gave them the dimensions of his cell. "Being kept in a three-by-six-by-seven-foot cell obviously constitutes psychological torture, which is worse, and that was Maher's whole point; it's not about the beatings, it's, 'I can't survive living in this cell another day,'" says Pither. (David Milgaard spent 22 years in a Canadian jail after being wrongfully convicted of murder. He received $10 million for his wasted years, slightly less than Arar got for his ten months.)
...And though the Arar commission went out of its way to stress that Arar is innocent, it also underplayed facts that demonstrated why Canadian police were suspicious of him back in 2001--his frenetic cross-border travel, for instance, and his residence in Framingham, Mass., are barely mentioned in the 1,200-page final report or in the 12,000-plus pages of testimony.
…in his Nov. 4, 2004, statement to the press, Arar told of being whipped with a two-inch-thick electrical cable. "They hit me with it everywhere on my body. They mostly aimed for my palms, but sometimes missed and hit my wrists; they were sore and red for three weeks," Arar states. Arar alleges his interrogators also hit him on his hips and lower back. "They used the cable on the second and third day, and after that mostly beat me with their hands, hitting me in the stomach and on the back of my neck, and slapping me on the face. Where they hit me with the cables, my skin turned blue for two or three weeks, but there was no bleeding," Arar stated. According to his own timeline, these horrors occurred between Oct. 11 and Oct. 16, 2002.
Yet the entire time he was in the Syrian prison, the Canadian officials who visited with Arar saw no signs of physical abuse. As for his condition when he got out, one Canadian eyewitness-- speaking to the Western Standard on condition of anonymity--who saw Arar in Syria only moments after his release from jail, put it this way: "If you call not being able to shower for 10 months torture, then I guess he was tortured. But from what I saw, he didn't look like he had been tortured."
Arar received a total of nine consular visits during his 10-month ordeal. The first of these was only one week after the alleged beatings stopped, so that would have been well before Arar, in his own words, says his injuries healed. On Oct. 23, 2002, Leo Martel, an experienced consular official, met with Arar. The diplomat described the visit in a note to his superiors written immediately afterward. The Syrians were present at all times and obligated everyone to speak in Arabic. He reported that Arar walked normally; the two men shook hands and Martel described the handshake as "normal" and stated that Arar did not withdraw his hand. The meeting lasted a half-hour. Martel wrote that Arar "looked like a frightened person," yet appeared otherwise healthy, but added, "Of course, it is difficult to assess." He saw no bruising. The commission report states, "Mr. Martel saw no apparent signs of sore or red wrists or palms, and no blue skin around Mr. Arar's face or neck."
Martel would visit Arar eight more times, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of others. All his consular reports were made public at the Arar commission. No signs of physical abuse were ever observed. Even after Arar was released, he did not speak of beatings. On the plane returning to Canada, when Martel asked Arar about physical torture, all he would say was, "They have other means.
John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute and an expert on terrorism, has met people who have been tortured in exactly the same way that Arar alleges. To him, Arar's account sounds fabricated. "If you're being whipped, there are permanent marks. A cable like that would leave scars, it would split the skin. Also, if you were being beaten around the hands with it, it would break your fingers. That's what these things do," he says. Ten years ago, he met an Iraqi who had been beaten with a two-inch electrical cable. "He lifted up his shirt and showed me the welter of scars on his back, and then pulled his arm out of his sleeve and there were marks on the upper arm. Whipping leaves some horrific scars."
…Unfortunately, torture allegations are quite common. Even the 18 accused terrorists who were arrested in Ontario last summer on charges of plotting to blow up the CBC and CN Tower and behead the prime minister claimed they were tortured at the Maplehurst Detention Centre. Such accusations have become standard fare; when training its recruits, al Qaeda teaches them to make a claim of torture as soon as they are put before a magistrate, or the media. And refugees have been making claims of torture all over the world for eons. In order to sort the real charges from the exaggerations or lies, in 1999, the United Nations created the Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, otherwise known as the Istanbul Protocol. Its 84 pages are full of detailed instructions. Nowhere, in the whole of the Arar story--in mountains of press clips, in Arar's lawsuits, in the O'Connor commission itself--is the Istanbul Protocol mentioned. Specifically, there is no reference to it in the Toope Report, and that might seem strange because, as the commission's press release made everyone aware, Toope has experience with the UN. Toope, now president of the University of British Columbia, did not return a request for an interview.
… Arar and his wife, Monia Mazigh, an economics professor and one-time candidate for the NDP, have said on several occasions that he has never been to Afghanistan and never had any desire to go there. Like the torture claims, this statement has gone unchallenged. At one point, while Arar was incarcerated and after the confession, Canada's Foreign Affairs department contacted the Arar family in order to obtain any documentation establishing Maher's whereabouts that year. They produced none. And it's not like the RCMP or CSIS were incapable of finding information; early in the RCMP investigation they turned up a gun permit Arar obtained in 1992. In fact, there was never any evidence presented at the Arar commission as to his whereabouts in that year. Instead, there were lengthy discussions downplaying any significance attached to being in Afghanistan at that time. In his final report, O'Connor skirts the whole issue and instead presents a chapter titled "Background Information on the Afghanistan Camps," in which the reader is treated to a little history primer, the conclusion of which can be summarized as: just because someone might have been at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan in 1993, doesn't necessarily mean they were a terrorist.
I really have just one question left: will Canadian taxpayers be getting our $10.5 million back?
