The suit charged the plaintiffs with violating Mr. Agar's constitutional right to due process, his right to choose a country of removal other than one in which he would be tortured, as guaranteed under the Torture Victims Protection Act, and his rights under international law.
The suit charged that Mr. Agar's Fifth Amendment due process rights were violated when he was confined without access to an attorney or the court system, both domestically before being rendered, and while detained by the Syrian government, whose actions were complicit with the U.S.
Additionally, the Attorney General and INS officials who carried out his deportation also likely violated his right to due process by recklessly subjecting him to torture at the hands of a foreign government that they had every reason to believe would carry out abusive interrogation.
Further, Mr. Arar filed a claim under the Torture Victims Protection Act, adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1992, which allows a victim of torture by an individual of a foreign government to bring suit against that actor in U.S. Court.
Mr. Arar's claim under the Act against Ashcroft and the INS directors is based upon their complicity in bringing about the torture he suffered.
The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. From there, it embarked on what is now a familiar journey -- to nowhere. The Trial and Appeals Court dismissed the suit. Ultimately the Supreme Court denied Mr. Arar's petition for certiorari to review the Second Circuit Court of Appeals' en banc decision dismissing his case, ending his case in U.S. courts.
But the Canadian Government took a very different approach. It convened a blue-ribbon panel to investigate the Arar incident. After a two-year probe, the Canadian government admitted it had made a serious mistake in the information it had supplied to the US on Arar. The head of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police was forced to resign, and Canada issues a formal apology to Arar and awarded him $10 million.
The US Government has steadfastly refused to even discuss the case, much less apologize. At a Congressional hearing soon after 9/11, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that the Arar case "wasn't handled very well," but came nowhere close to apologizing to anyone for anything.
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