Are you willing. . .?

"Name one American harmed by the current set of laws that has taken away their civil liberties? Name one harm inflicted"

There are lots. But here is a case I am familiar with concerning a Canadian who was grabbed at JFK and sent to Syria to be tortured. He is completely innocent.


Maher Arar, a 35-year-old Canadian engineer, is suing the United States, saying American officials grabbed him in 2002 as he changed planes in New York and transported him to Syria where, he says, he was held for 10 months in a dank, tiny cell and brutally beaten with a metal cable.

Now federal aviation records examined by The New York Times appear to corroborate Mr. Arar's account of his flight, during which, he says, he sat chained on the leather seats of a luxury executive jet as his American guards watched movies and ignored his protests.

The tale of Mr. Arar, the subject of a yearlong inquiry by the Canadian government, is perhaps the best documented of a number of cases since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which suspects have accused the United States of secretly delivering them to other countries for interrogation under torture. Deportation for interrogation abroad is known as rendition.

In papers filed in a New York court replying to Mr. Arar's lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers say the case was not one of rendition but of deportation. They say Mr. Arar was deported to Syria based on secret information that he was a member of Al Qaeda, an accusation he denies.

The discovery of the aircraft, in a database compiled from Federal Aviation Agency records, appears to corroborate part of the story Mr. Arar has told many times since his release in 2003. The records show that a Gulfstream III jet, tail number N829MG, followed a flight path matching the route he described. The flight, hopscotching from New Jersey to an airport near Washington to Maine to Rome and beyond, took place on Oct. 8, 2002, the day after Mr. Arar's deportation order was signed.

After seeing a photograph of the plane and hearing its path, Mr. Arar, 35, of Ottawa, said in a telephone interview: ''I think that's it. I think you've found the plane that took me.''

He added: ''Finding this plane is going really to help me. It does remind me of this trip, which is painful, but it should make people understand that this is for real and everything happened the way I said. I hope people will now stop for a moment and think about the morality of this.''

Records of the jet's travels also show a trip in December 2003 to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States holds hundreds of detainees, suggesting that it was used by the government on at least one other occasion.

If the plane was used to move Mr. Arar, it is the fourth known to have been used to transport suspected terrorists secretly from one country to detention in another.

Among the three identified in previous news reports is one owned by a company apparently set up by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to The Washington Post. Another, first described by The Chicago Tribune, is an ordinary charter jet that was also used by the Boston Red Sox manager between missions ferrying detainees and their guards to Guantanamo, with the Red Sox logo attached to the fuselage or removed, depending on who was aboard.

Maria LaHood, a lawyer for Mr. Arar, said the new information on the Gulfstream jet lent support to his lawsuit.

''The facts we got from Maher right after he was released are now corroborated by public records,'' said Ms. LaHood, who works for the Center for Constitutional Rights, a group in New York that advocates investigation of human rights abuses. ''The more information that comes out, the better for showing that this is an important public issue that can't be kept secret.''

She said Mr. Arar and his attorneys believe that American officials wanted him to undergo a more brutal interrogation than would be permitted in the United States in the hope of getting information about Al Qaeda.

After 10 months in a cell he compared to a grave, and 2 more months in a less confined space, Syrian officials freed Mr. Arar in October 2003, saying they had been unable to find any connection to Al Qaeda. The Syrian ambassador to the United States called the release ''a gesture of good will toward Canada.''

Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the government had no comment on the case. The administration has refused to cooperate with the Canadian inquiry into Mr. Arar's case and has asked a judge to dismiss most of his lawsuit, saying that allowing it to proceed would reveal classified information.

President Bush has said it is United States policy neither to engage in torture nor to deliver prisoners to countries where they are likely to be tortured. Former intelligence officials say rendition is useful for cases in which secret information has identified a suspected terrorist but cannot be used for a public prosecution in an American court.

Mr. Arar has told a consistent story since his release: He was detained at Kennedy International Airport in New York on Sept. 26, 2002, while changing planes on the way back to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia. He was then held for nearly two weeks, awakened at 3 a.m. and taken to an airport in New Jersey, where he was put aboard a small jet.

Shackled in place, Mr. Arar says, he followed the plane's movements on a map displayed on a video screen, watching as it traveled to Dulles Airport, outside Washington, to a Maine airport he believed was in Portland, to Rome, and finally to Amman, Jordan, where he was blindfolded and driven to Syria.

According to F.A.A. flight logs for Oct. 8, 2002, only one aircraft flew from New Jersey to the Washington area to Maine to Rome: the 14-passenger Gulfstream III jet, operated by Presidential Aviation, a charter company in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The jet left Teterboro, N.J., for Dulles at 5:40 a.m.; proceeded at 7:46 a.m. to Bangor, Me.; and left Bangor for Rome at 9:36 a.m.

The only conflict with Mr. Arar's story is that the Maine airport was Bangor, not Portland. And the logs cover only flights departing from the United States, so they document the trip only as far as Rome. Court records show, however, that immigration officials ordered him deported to Syria.

Nigel England, director of operations for Presidential, said he would not divulge who rented the Gulfstream that day or discuss any clients.

''It's a very select group of people that we fly, from entertainers to foreign heads of state, a whole gamut of customers that we fly and wouldn't discuss one over the other,'' he said.

The plane flew about 50 flights a month to various destinations in 2002 and 2003, according to federal records. Presidential's Web site says a similar jet would now rent for about $120,000 for an itinerary like the one on which Mr. Arar apparently was flown.

Records show that the plane was owned in 2002 by MJG Aviation, a Florida company that lists its manager as Mark J. Gordon, an entrepreneur who also owned Presidential at the time. Mr. Gordon could not be reached. The plane has since been sold and the tail number has been changed to N259SK, records show.

As for Mr. Arar, he said he felt the identification of the plane helped establish his credibility. ''I don't know for sure but probably people had some doubts about what I said,'' he said. ''This goes to prove and corroborate at least part of my story. I hope even more information will come forward.''



URL: http://www.nytimes.com

 

"Surrendering those personal liberties will lead to unjust convictions, arrests and ruined lives for innocent people--I don't think that's acceptible in my country."

It has already and is already happening. See my previous post concerning Maher Arar.

 

I just voted and saw the majority of I am assuming Prius owners voted no. Wow, I guess they would have impeached FDR for doing what he did, and of course Lincoln for suspending habeus corpus rights, etc.

I guess our way of life is not good enough or valued enough by some of us to believe it worth sacrificing for. I wonder if these people would fight and possibly die for this country - or is it just a one way street - take and no give.

If you are not convinced the rights you so cherish now are worth sacrificing for, than I wonder if you should be allowed to cast a vote at all - there are many here who believe they are worth more than lip service - and the pity is there have always been enough of us to protect those who do deem themselves above the fray - the fray that every American generation has faced and up to now faced with purpose and unity.

Me myself, I would willingly fight for this country, as my father served, and as my son's would serve. When Amerca is taken down, were do we find safe harbor??

Ironically, those amoung us aid an enemy whose beliefs and overall operating systems could not be further from our Bill of Rights, of our way of governance, of our way of beliefs. Funny if they should win - and then those (like the NY Times and USA Today, and Murtha, Sheehan) that aid in our downfall would themselves become vitims of the enemy they aided - wouldn't that be ironic?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eyeguy13 @ May 11 2006, 11:34 PM) [snapback]253926[/snapback]</div>

Aha, HA....HA.....HA.........ROFLMAO

With whom should we have these conversations? They will not stop until we either surrender to their way of life, or die.

But Mr. E. Squid's "jack booted thugs" will surely show their faces if we give up liberties, or if we lose.

Even though I have nothing to hide, I voted "no."

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ May 12 2006, 02:35 PM) [snapback]254221[/snapback]</div>

What type of error rate would you find acceptable to save 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 Americans from a terror attack?

Or are we just a fair target for those that dont fight "fair"?

And, are we allowed to defend ourselves and meet our enemy on the same level they operate on? Or, should we handicap ourselves and expose ourselves potentially to greater harm?

 

"guess our way of life is not good enough or valued enough by some of us to believe it worth sacrificing for"

What are we supposed to sacrifice for? So the government can send innocent people to Syria to be tortured and then lie about it? What is worth fighting for is doing everything you can to prevent the government from doing "forced renditions" like this.

I have to laugh at the idea that you think the NY Times is some radical rag. Good thing you don't read the Guardian!

I don't know how you think. Do you really think that it was just great that Maher Arar's life was ruined out of complete arrogance?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ May 12 2006, 02:35 PM) [snapback]254221[/snapback]</div>

I just read it. You really believe that???? Isn't that the same paper (NY Times) that published a picture on the FRONT PAGE of the guy supposedly photographed in Abu Graib being tortured with electric wires attached to his body ---- only to have to retract it that it turned out they were WRONG. Isn't that the paper that published the NSA international eavesdropping technology after Bush called them and asked them not to - how that would harm our ability to defend ourselves - and they still did?

I am still waiting for one person to claim one instance of harm. The freaken aclu cant wait to get a case to court - and you cant name one suit brought on a loss of a single civil liberty. It is ok to hate Bush and hate the United States - that is your right - but get real. And you should be thankful you were not around during the Civil War or WWII - you probably would have wanted to impeach Lincoln and FDR??? Imagine how hard it would have been to rant and rave back then.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ May 12 2006, 11:38 AM) [snapback]254224[/snapback]</div>

How does wanting to protect our rights become aiding an enemy? Innocent lives are destroyed in most every witch hunt ever concieved for the "good of all".

Getting your bags checked before getting on a plane or going through a metal detector is designed to look for one specific cause but profiling phone conversations is a fishing expedition. For the "nothing to hide group", the terrorists will figure out other methods to communicate leaving the government in the dust like usual.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ May 12 2006, 02:47 PM) [snapback]254235[/snapback]</div>

Sending people to the same country we are trying to take down? Boy oh boy. Have you ever been abducted by alliens? So far the only lives really ruined were some of my friends and neighbors when they got murdered by a bunch of murderers whom you tend to believe more than your fellow Americans - good for you and the US where your rights to side with the enemy are protected.

My default would be if I were to forgive an error being made, I would forgive it for trying to defend my way of life and not for enabling my enemy a better chance at destroying them. But then again, you have the right to side with whomever you find most comforting.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Salsawonder @ May 12 2006, 02:50 PM) [snapback]254241[/snapback]</div>

Name one right you lost? Just one...................................................... I am waiting...................................

Name the law being violated by the government by tracking phone calls - not listening in on them - just tracking them? Heck, google your own tel # and see what info you can get that way. Jeez, this is disturbing.....

They wont have to find other ways to communicate in your world - they could just use their cell phone here. Amazing how they can use our own telecommunication infrastructure to destroy us - that is if you had your way.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ May 12 2006, 02:18 PM) [snapback]254208[/snapback]</div>

i agree, the trend is frightening. i hoped i'd never see anything like it. i was wrong.

(and one picky thing i'm sure you know but were trying to get your ideas out quickly... bnw was written by huxley.)

just because i have nothing to hide does not mean i'm open to people listening in to whatever i'm talking about. let's face it, taken out of context anything you say can/will be used against you. just look at some of the threads here in fred's...
the government can do much worse than flame you on a web forum.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ May 12 2006, 03:09 PM) [snapback]254256[/snapback]</div>

You guys aren't tired yet of crying McCarthyism? I am not questioning something you don't have - obviously. if you don't believe this country is worth fighting for - you cant be patriotic. It is like supporting the troops without supporting the mission - disingenuous at best, dangerous at the least, and overall naive.

You dont have to agree with me - you just should not be making it easier for our enemies to harm us. Every generation of Americans placed in similar circumstances willing made sacrifices knowing that it is best to do your most to win the fight to PROTECT your liberties than to lose the fight and lose your liberties FOREVER.

Still waiting for you to name ONE Right you have lost since 9/11..........................................

 

"It's to protect myself from people who think like you that I want my personal liberties preserved."

Very well said!

This is Mahar Arrar with his family. As innocent of terrorism as you or me. But he was sent by the US government to Syria where he was tortured. Is that "an acceptable error rate?" Not for me. And tomorrow it could be you torn from your family or me if one of our names appears on a secret list.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ May 12 2006, 02:58 PM) [snapback]254247[/snapback]</div>

Name one "Right" you have surrendered.

No, I did not serve. The draft ended before I turned 18 - but I would today if I had to. And just because you did does not make you the ultimate voice of those that did or do - just like jack murtha - even veterans lose their way.

Again, name one right you have surrendered............

 

"Still waiting for you to name ONE Right you have lost since 9/11.."

How about the right to go through an airport without being grabbed, put in chains and sent to a foreign country to be tortured while your family tries to find out what the hell happened to you and the government lies through the teeth? And before you say it didn't happen to me, let me remind you that if it could happen to Arrar it could happen to you or me. The principle is what is at stake.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ May 12 2006, 03:18 PM) [snapback]254263[/snapback]</div>

You are making multiple assumptions - which you can do - even if you are assuming that we are evil and wrong.

Still waiting for you to name one, just one "Right" you have lost or surrendered since 9/11...........

I am getting sick and tired of hearing you guys rant and rave about losing rights - name one please that you have kissed goodbye...............................

Just one - that should not be hard - we have soooo many that you cherish and use and offer our enemies. Just name one. And I am not asking you to name any civil rights your side has granted our sworn enemies.

I tell you what. Make an equation. How many rights have been taken away from you and how many your side has granted our enemy.

Ready.....

Go.......

I am waiting.....

All that ranting and raving.....

There must be dozens of rights stripped from you.........

Fill in the blanks:
Rights I lost as an American Citizen since 9/11:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.


Just making it easy for you