Delivered Into Hell by U.S. War on Terror

[Cleita]

By Maher Arar

From the Los Angeles Times, December 10, 2003

This requires that you register, but it is free and a one time registration. It's worth it for the quality of articles and editorials The Los Angeles Times publishes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-arar10dec10,1,1581222.story


<snip>
I recently spent 10 1/2 months in a grave-sized cell in Syria, unsure why I was there, unsure how to get out. Fear paralyzed my wits when I needed them most. I was beaten and I was tortured and I was constantly scared. Every day I worried that I would never be released, that I would disappear into that concrete grave forever.

Why was I being held? I still don't really know. I am not a terrorist. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I am a Syrian-born Canadian. A father and a husband. A telecommunications engineer. I have never been in trouble with the police and have always been a good citizen.

My ordeal began on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2002, when my flight back from a family vacation in Tunisia stopped over in New York and American immigration officials pulled me aside to answer a few questions. At first it was only an inconvenience — thorough airport security, post 9/11-style. But my questioners persisted. And when someone waved a copy of the 1997 lease for my Ottawa apartment, I was shocked and confused. What was going on here? Who gave them the lease and what was its significance to them? For the first time, I began to realize that the questioning was not simply routine.

My interrogation in the United States took days. Shuttling in shackles among immigration officials, FBI agents and police officers, I asked repeatedly for a lawyer but was told that I didn't have the right to one because I was not an American citizen. There were no phone calls home either. More....
<snip>

[wtmusic]

1. link?

[Cleita]

2. Link edited in.

Thanks. I had a senior moment there.

[tom_paine]

3. A lovely place, Imperial Amerika

This sort of thing is just the beginning, and after 2005 will not be relegated to foriegners alone, if it isn't already...

[Cleita]

4. Yes, I'm thinking how similar it is to the start of

the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It was a decade before the camps were in full throttle. The persecution started little by little, not so much at first for it to be really noticable. The Nazis preyed on the inborn prejudices of the population by encouraging German Christians in not hiring Jews, not serving them in stores or hotels and other venues. Then they started rounding them up and shipping them off to camps for trumped up charges. Eventually, it was enough to just be a Jew to be a criminal.

[truth2power]

5. This is on Common Dreams

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1210-04.htm

You don't have to register.

[Martin Eden]

6. The American Gulag...

...is not just in Gitmo, it's in Syria and who knows what other hell holes.

[teryang]

7. The pneumbral effect

The erosion of human rights and civil rights begins with those on the fringes of society, recent immigrants, illegal immigrants, "non-citizens."

When the unthinking public becomes comfortable and even encouraging of the abuse of rights of disfavored groups, then the inroads into the rights of card carrying "citizens" will be executed (the laws already exist). First Dachau, then Auschwitz.

Unthinking Americans get off on denying suspects of their civil rights. Go to any barber shop or bar and listen to men seeking approval for their barbaric and xenophobic opinions on war, torture, the death penalty, and "terrorists." These people wouldn't know a piece of evidence or what due process was if it hit them in the head. Yet corporate and government lies and corruption whistles right over their head. The responses usually are "That's right Blame America First!" "You can't prove that!" "You support the tarrists?" The radical reorganization of the central government and nationalization of state and local police forces means nothing to them.


The idea that the government could be collecting everyones financial information, travel records, and purchase records without a warrant and without notice draws the response, "Doesn't bother me, I've got nothing to hide." Once all the info is collected schemes to seize and/or defraud categories of those accounts won't be far behind.

This is the destiny of government lists.