There is a lot of nasty stuff I've been willing to defend in the War on Terror. However, if this story is true, it is the first thing that I can honestly say I consider to be pure evil inflicted by our government.

Torture, American Style

Maher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime. But, as Jane Mayer tells us in a compelling and deeply disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker, he "was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet."

In an instant, Mr. Arar was swept into an increasingly common nightmare, courtesy of the United States of America. The plane that took off with him from Kennedy "flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan."

Any rights Mr. Arar might have thought he had, either as a Canadian citizen or a human being, had been left behind. At times during the trip, Mr. Arar heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of "the Special Removal Unit." He was being taken, on the orders of the U.S. government, to Syria, where he would be tortured.

It is hard for me to believe that we can just grab a citizen of another country (much less a friendly neighbor) on a stopover and send them away to be tortured. If anything about this story turns out not to be true, Bob Herbert should be fired immediately. If it is true, we should all write letters to Congress denouncing this act.

There's a detailed timeline from the CBC here - Maher Arar: Timeline

Seems like there's some debate as to whether Canadian intelligence or police were aware of what was going on. Governemnt officials (who I wouldn't normally think would back the U.S. government over their own citizens) have been stonewalling an investigation into Canadian complicity in the deportation.

More - there's a website dedicated to Maher Arar.