Other countries probing Bush-era torture — Why aren't we?

[P F Tinmore]

WASHINGTON — In June, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case of a Canadian man who contends that U.S. authorities mistook him for an al Qaida operative in 2002 and shipped him to a secret prison in Syria, where he was beaten with electrical cables and held in a grave-like cell for 10 months.

Four years earlier, however, the Canadian government had concluded an exhaustive inquiry and found that the former prisoner, Maher Arar, was telling the truth. Canada cleared Arar of all ties to terrorism and paid him $10 million in damages, and his lawyers say he's cooperating with an investigation into the role of U.S. and Syrian officials in his imprisonment and reported torture.

Arar's case illustrates what lawyers and human rights groups call a shameful trend: While U.S. courts and the Obama administration have been reluctant or unwilling to pursue the cases, countries that once backed former President George W. Bush's war on terrorism are carrying out their own investigations of the alleged U.S. torture program and the role that their governments played in it.

Read more: Other countries probing Bush-era torture — Why aren't we? | McClatchy

Other countries probing Bush-era torture — Why aren't we? | McClatchy

 

[blastoff]

Thought those witch hunts here petered out.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

I'm still waiting on an ivestigation into the Amercan citizens executed, deported and illegally detained by the Lincoln administratiion.