Dear Editor,
The frightening experience of Ali-al-Marri should be of particular interest to Indo-American green card holder. Three years ago, Ali al-Marri was snatched by Bush’s secret police (the CIA) declared an ‘enemy combatant’ and tossed into prison without trial and without any formal charges being applied. The declaration ‘enemy combatant’ is somewhat perplexing because he had never been engaged in any hostile action and therefore the charge seems utterly preposterous. This is an extremely important case because it marks one of the first challenges of the Military Commission Act and its suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus.
If the government prevails in its unfounded charges based on hearsay or worse on outright lies, this would send a chilling message to the 20 million green card holders (including many Indo-Americans). These immigrants could be arrested, without cause and jailed indefinitely. Clearly, these new edicts could be grossly abused to stifle dissent and move our society closer to becoming a tyrannical, totalitarian state. Recent government intrusions into our private lives (illegal wiretapping, email interceptions) are ample evidence of ‘big brothers’ hidden agenda. Non-US citizens are especially vulnerable.
Take the case of German citizen Khaled El-Masri who was kidnapped by CIA operatives in broad daylight in Germany and flown to a secret site where he was brutally tortured. Such actions are eerily reminiscent of mafia style ‘Godfather’ practices. Another innocent victim that fell to the CIA dragnet was Mr. Arar who was apprehended at Kennedy on route to Toronto. His arrest was based on bogus information provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police RCMP). His loud protests of innocence were ignored. His demands to see a lawyer were ignored. His demand to contact his family was ignored. He expressed great fear that he would be tortured when he was told he was being sent to Syria to be interrogated.
His worse fears were soon realized when he was savagely beaten and then confined to a small dungeon for nearly a year. He was finally released after his brutal interrogators failed to extract a ‘confession’. On his return to Toronto, he successfully sued the Canadian government and received an apology and a substantial settlement. A Canadian high court judge, Dennis O’Conner, produced an incisive report highly critical of the heavy handed measures and sloppy intelligence that caused so much pain to one of its citizens. Predictably, the Bush administration which has an unblemished record for deceit and obfuscation has remained silent and has refused to remove Arar from its terrorist ‘no fly list’. It remains totally unconcerned that its brutal actions have destroyed Arar’s health. .
In a welcome sign that sanity is slowly returning to Europe, several countries, most notably France and Germany have made it clear they will no longer tolerate such flagrant abuses of their citizenry. Warrants have already been issued in Germany against CIA operatives guilty of such brutal behavior. In the home country, another welcome sign that legislators are challenging the dark actions of the Bush administration, North Carolina legislators are investigating, Aero Contractors, which was retained by the CIA to fly its human cargo to ‘black site’ dungeons of the world. However, much needs to be done on the home front if we are to reverse the erosion of our civil liberties and charter a new course in our disastrous foreign policy debacles.
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