Why won't the U.S. admit Maher Arar's innocence? It may be fear of precedent. Tales of other suspects seized and sent abroad to face torture are beginning to come to light in Europe. This week, those stories helped bring down the Italian government. And as Doug Saunders reports, this could be just the beginning.
DOUG SAUNDERS
From Saturday's Globe and MailOn an October evening five years ago, a Gulfstream III executive jet appeared in the sky above Rome and requested a landing at Ciampino Airport, a small military and tourist-flight destination on the ancient Via Appia. On board the 14-seat plane were two pilots, a steward, five CIA agents and a tall, elegant Canadian wearing a green sweater, a pair of jeans and metal shackles.
The Gulfstream, registered to a CIA-connected firm known as Presidential Aviation, was on European soil for exactly 37 minutes. When it had finished refuelling, it left Ciampino at 8:59 p.m. and headed to Amman, Jordan. There, Maher Arar was carried off the plane, beaten, and loaded into a van headed to Damascus, where he would face 10 months and 10 days of horrendous torture.
Those 37 minutes are now coming back to haunt Europe.
Mr. Arar's ordeal, and the wealth of investigations and recriminations that have followed in Canada, has provoked a deep sense of alarm in European politics this week. This Syrian-Canadian's case, the abject apology he received from Prime Minister Stephen Harper last month and the bewildering lack of acknowledgment from Washington, has made a half-dozen governments realize that they may soon face similar public self-examinations.
Read the rest here.
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