On September 26, the Duke Human Rights Center sponsored an event called “Unheard Voices in the ‘war on terror,'” featuring Canadian Maher Arar (seen on live video from the University of Ottawa, left) who was subjected to extraordinary rendition in 2002.
To summarize, Arar was taken by US authorities as he changed planes in New York’s JFK airport on September 26, 2002. The CIA then flew him to Syria, where he had been born. For ten months and ten days, he was tortured. Finally, the Syrians realized he was innocent of ties to Al Qaeda.
Released, he successfully sued the Canadian government, whose information, passed to the US, was partially responsible for his seizure. A Commission of Inquiry found “there is nothing to indicate that Mr. Arar committed an offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada.”
Fast forward to the 
news today. Khaled el-Masri (left, with his children), a German who suffered a similar outrage, recently sued the US for its role in abducting him while he was traveling in Macedonia. The Americans, according to el-Masri, beat him, then stripped and drugged him, gave him an enema, dressed him in a diaper, then flew him to “the salt pit,” a covert CIA interrogation center in Afghanistan.
There, he was brutally tortured.
In the end, the Americans realized they had the wrong person. Surreptitiously, they dumped him on a hillside in Albania, hoping, one imagines, to hide their role.
Yesterday, our gutless Supreme Court declined to allow el-Masri to pursue his claim against the United States in U.S. courts, claiming that this would disclose “information that would endanger national security.” Shockingly, the Supreme Court’s decision came “without comment or dissent, according to the Washington Post.
This is hog wash — the American judicial system is replete with protections that would shield any sensitive information. But what I suspect the government wants to keep hidden is how awful their “ant-terror” efforts are, not only for human rights, but also in terms of effectiveness.
In a surprisingly restrained statement, the ACLU, which is representing el-Masri, said the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case “has provided the government with complete immunity for its shameful human rights and due-process violations.”
I think it is possible to say something far worse — that we have become a nation that freely tortures, openly “disappears” and baldly evades accountability.
This cuts especially close in North Carolina, where AeroContractors, one of the CIA companies that runs rendition flights, operates. Another guest at the Duke event was Christina Cowger, a member of NC Stop Torture Now. This fantastic group has been tracking rendition flights out of the state and also sponsors marches and protests at the airports used by these companies. This is all the more striking when you realize that the pilots — the ones who fly drugged, hooded and enema-ed passengers to known torture centers — are their neighbors, fellow church members and “soccer parents.”
Here is a great video about how local people went to the gates of Aero Contractors in Johnston County, NC, on April 9, 2007 deliver citizens arrest warrants. The guards refused to allow entry, and 8 activists were arrested in this peaceful action.
[googlevideo]7203324508630869946[/googlevideo]
I can’t help but despair about the reaction of most Americans to this kind of news — and the clear and overwhelming evidence of what is being done in our names.
Are we the new Germans, oblivious — or willing ourselves not to see — what is going on all around us?
One of my heroes, history professor Claudia Koonz, author of The Nazi Conscience, describes the greatest achievement of the Nazis in this way. Their victory was to convince most people not to lament that their friend, Hans, was being taken away; is was to make them say to themselves, “Too bad Hans is a Jew!”
Too bad Maher was born in Syria! Too bad Khaled el-Masri has a suspicious name!