[SRQ] Maher Arar

When the story of Maher Arar's mistreatment by US authorities first broke, I
was very vocal in my opposition to the way that he was treated. I wrote at
length on the wrongness of the way he had been treated here. To my mind
it seemed and still seems outrageous that a Canadian travelling on a Canadian
passport who is doing no more than changing flights in the US can be taken
into custody, beaten up, denied access to lawyers and the protection of the
Canadian consulate, with no one being told as to where he is even being
held, and then shipped off to Syria to endure a year's torture there before
it being established beyond doubt by those torturers, that he is innocent
of all the accusations (originally given the US by our Canadian Intelligence
Agency) that he is a terrorist.

Canada has admitted its wrong doing in this case, and has made substantial
effort to compensate Maher and his family for the wrong done him and that
family.

Maher says it all in observing following the latest refusal of US courts to
even here his case against those that mistreated him that:

"When it comes to 'national security' matters the judicial system has willingly
abandoned its sacred role of ensuring that no one is above the law", he said
in a statement.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/14-8

Each day it seems one more step for the US away from the nation it once was,
and one more step along the road to finding it is not some Canadian robbed of
the right to protest a system that presumes guilty until proven innocent, but
some American. Justice denied, is not justice but the absence of justice.

"The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to
its children."

Deitrich Bonhoffer.

Ian.
.