Outsourcing abuse
On September 26, 2002, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was flying home to Montreal from a family trip to Tunisia. During a stopover at New York's JFK…
On September 26, 2002, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was flying home to Montreal from a family trip to Tunisia. During a stopover at New York’s JFK Airport, he was detained by American immigration officials, who questioned him about connections to Al Qaeda, then threw him into Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. Two weeks later, he was flown to Washington and then to Amman, where, he claims, the Jordanians “blindfolded and chained me, and put me in a van…. Every time I tried to talk, they beat me.” Hours later, he was transferred again, this time to Syria. The Syrians placed him in a nearly pitch-black, three-by-six cell. Periodically, they beat him with an electrical cable and threatened him with electric shocks and a device called “the metal chair,” which stretches the spine. During one such session, he confessed to attending an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan (a confession he now disavows). Ten months later, he was released back to Canada, where he has not been charged with any crime. Next month, the Canadian government will launch an inquiry into the case, which has garnered front-page coverage north of the border.
Originally published on ] t h i n k [ (tootb.blogspot.com); recovered from the Wayback Machine.