Court Weighs 'Extraordinary Rendition' Case (NPR)

Recorded from NPR's (National Public Radio) "All Things Considered", December 9, 2008 - A federal appeals court in New York heard arguments in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was flown from the U.S. to Syria for interrogation in a case of "extraordinary rendition."

Arar wants to sue the U.S. government for violating his constitutional right to due process — something he has not been permitted to do thus far because the Bush administration has said to do so would imperil national security.

The facts of the case are not in dispute. In 2002, U.S. authorities detained Arar at John F. Kennedy airport in New York. He was suspected of terrorism ties and was sent to Syria for interrogation. Arar spent 10 months there in a cell he called the "grave." He says he was tortured.

Eventually, Arar was allowed to return to Canada and a Canadian commission cleared him of all charges. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has even said mistakes were made in Arar's case.

National Security Grounds

In court Tuesday, one of the 12 appeals court judges present grilled government attorney Jonathan Cohn on the government's national security contention.

"So the minute the executive raises the specter of foreign policy, national security, it is the government's position that is a license to torture anyone?" Judge Sonia Sotomayor said. "License meaning you can do so without any financial consequence. That's your position?"

"No. That is not our position," Cohn countered. "That is emphatically not our position."

Cohn said he thought the court should wait until Congress acted and found a new way to address these kinds of cases so that they could be tried but still protect national security interests. This was not a normal case, he said, because state secrets were at its root.

So far, two courts have blocked Arar's case from being heard, siding with the Bush administration that it could unintentionally reveal things that would hurt national security. That's why Tuesday's hearing was important and why all 12 judges on the court heard the arguments.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• extraordinary
• rendition
• torture
• Bush
• administration
• Judge
• Sonia
• Sotomayor