Correction: – Sorry I got the original story wrong. –

I accused the U.S. State Department Human Rights report of lying, when it said about a man tortured in Syria that he had "returned home to Syria to visit his family".

I assumed the man mentioned was Maher Arar, who had been abducted by U.S. officials and was send to Syria to be tortured. With this assumption in mind, it looked like a lie.

But the State Departments report may refer to Abdullah Almalki who is a Canadian-Syrian and who did return to Syria to visit relatives. Both men, Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki, are reported to have been severly tortured in Syrian prisions. There are some 47,700 Google links related to "Maher Arar" and some 1,220 related to "Abdullah Almalki". I did assume the wider reported story was the base of the report.

So the State Department may not have lied as I alleged. But the State Department has the hypocrisy and chutzpah to include the case of a Abdullah Almalki in their human rights report on Syria, while ommitting the very well documented case of Maher Arar.

In the omitted case the US administration is directly responsible for Human Rights violations. It was obviously convinient, to not include it.

This in mind, you still may want to read my original uncorrected post below the fold.

Uncorrected post follows:

The U.S. State Department just released their yearly Human Rights report which covers all foreign countries. It is a good report and tough even on Americas friends, but this year the State Department lies.

The report says about one man who was tortured in Syria that he had "returned home to Syria to visit his family" before he was tortured there. This is an outrages lie. The man that is reported on was abducted by the United States government and send to Syria in an euphemistic named extraordinary rendition case.

To follow the trail we have to start in Canada.

Some people think Canada would be great country to emigrate to in case things get too hot at home. But maybe there are Human Rights issues? Check the report:

U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, February 28, 2005   

CANADA

Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

a. Freedom of Speech and Press

On January 21, police officers searched the home of an Ottawa newspaper reporter and the offices of the newspaper itself in search of documents related to a Syrian-born Canadian citizen arrested abroad as a suspected terrorist. The reporter faced possible criminal charges under the anti-terrorism Security of Information Act. Although a court authorized the search, some members of the media and human rights groups raised concerns that it infringed on the Charter of Rights, which guarantees the freedom of the press.

Reporters Without Borders describes why reporter Juliet O’Neill was harassed:

The search was linked to an article by O’Neill that appeared on 8 November 2003 about the case of Syrian-Canadian citizen Maher Arar. She had investigated the implication that the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) were involved in his expulsion to Syria, under suspicion of links with al-Qaida.

A serious case. The State Department is right to criticize Canada on this. The reporter that uncovers illegal government behavior by using ‘secret’ information should be lauded and not become the victim of a police raid (10 officers, no less) and a criminal investigations.

The State Departments report also includes Syria. Syria is accused of torture in every State Department Human Rights report since 1999. Unfortunately Syrias practice has not changed much in 2004.

SYRIA

Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:

c. Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

Former prisoners and detainees, as well as the HRAS, reported that torture methods included administering electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; forcing objects into the rectum; beating, sometimes while the victim was suspended from the ceiling; hyperextending the spine; bending the detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts; and using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the victim’s spine. Torture was most likely to occur while detainees were being held at one of the many detention centers run by the various security services throughout the country, particularly while the authorities were attempting to extract a confession or information. For example, in July, a Syrian-Canadian citizen reportedly was tortured while being questioned by security services (see Section 1.e).
…
e. Denial of Fair Public Trial

On July 11, the [Supreme State Security Court] SSSC acquitted for lack of evidence a Syrian-Canadian citizen arrested in 2002 when he returned home to Syria to visit his family. The individual was charged with belonging to a religious group and was reportedly tortured while in detention (see Section 1.c.).

The same Syrian-Canadian citizen that Juliet O’Neill reported on, was tortured in Syria and I agree with the State Departments human rights report to damn such behavior. 

But the State Department lies. They say the tortured man "returned home to Syria to visit his family".

Here Bob Herbert’s column in yesterdays New York Times says something different:

It’s Called Torture

Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife and two young children, had his life flipped upside down in the fall of 2002 when John Ashcroft’s Justice Department, acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian government, decided it would be a good idea to abduct Mr. Arar and ship him off to Syria, an outlaw nation that the Justice Department honchos well knew was addicted to torture.

Mr. Arar was not charged with anything, and yet he was deprived not only of his liberty, but of all legal and human rights. He was handed over in shackles to the Syrian government and, to no one’s surprise, promptly brutalized. A year later he emerged, and still no charges were lodged against him. His torturers said they were unable to elicit any link between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was sent back to Canada to face the torment of a life in ruins.

Maher Arar did not "returned home to Syria to visit his family". Maher Arar was on the way from Tunisia to his Canadian home when he was abducted during a stop-over in New York and secretly shipped off into the torture hell of Syrian prisons by the United States Government and with help of the Canadian police.

The State Department’s Human Rights report includes this outrages lie to cover Human Rights misdeeds of the United States of America.

The report covers all countries of this world – but one.

Guess why.