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The Maher Arar Scandal and the (Redacted) Homeland Security Inspector Report

By Jack M. Balkin

The Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security has issued a report to Congress on the scandalous transfer of Maher Arar to Syria. Today, the IG has made public a redacted version of that report, which reveals, among other things, that (i) Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson was responsible for refusing to transfer Arar to his home in Canada, without providing any reason for that decision; (ii) that DOJ and the government also refused to transfer Arar to Switzerland, the nation of origin of his trip (which would have been the norm if Canada were not chosen); and (iii) most importantly, that even after the INS determined that it was more likely than not that Arar would be tortured in Syria, he was transferred to that nation in an artificially and extremely expedited fashion, in a manner that circumvented the involvement of his attorneys, and apparently based on some vague "assurances" from Syria that did not come through the State Department (which also appears to have been cut out of the loop -- on this point, John Bellinger's testimony next week should be interesting).

Our own Scott Horton testified today as to why many of the redactions in the IG Report remain unjustifiable. A copy of Scott's previous Harper's post on the Arar case, which I recommend, is appended to the end of his testimony.

Interestingly, in his own testimony today, the Homeland Security IG states that "we have reopened our review into the Mr. Arar matter because, less than a month ago, we received additional information that contradicts one of the conclusions in our report. As such, we are in the process of conducting additional interviews to determine the validity of this information to the extent we can."

I don't really have time to blog in detail about this horrifying case, which has been the subject of extensive, much more candid and forthright Canadian reports, and which is currently the subject of a lawsuit brought by Mr. Arar against U.S. officials. Suffice it to say, for now, that even the outlines of the story that can be gleaned from the IG's redacted Report reveal government conduct that is fairly breathtaking in its lawlessness and capriciousness.

Full post as published by Balkinization on June 05, 2008 (boomark / email).