Thursday, October 22, 2009

Iggy the Wrong on Maher Arar

Oh Iggy... opened your mouth again did ya?

"Canada sent Maher Arar (a Canadian engineer) to Syria, and a court found that he had been subjected to extraordinary rendition, that his claims (of torture) were true and that he had delivered no intelligence to anybody. It was a disgrace. So, we don't do it. Ever. Period. Off the table. We don't get other people to do our dirty work for us, and we don't do dirty work ever."

Arar was sent to Syria by the United States in late 2002 after he was detained while in transit to Canada through JFK Airport in New York.

Contrary to what Ignatieff said, no court has made findings of fact in Arar's case.

I'm wondering if the only thing Iggy reads are his own books.

From UBC law professor Michael Byers:

"For him to get the facts wrong on the highest profile case of torture involving a Canadian citizen is deeply worrying.

"It suggests a certain lack of attention to detail, and perhaps even concern, on a matter that was engaging the Canadian public, a commission of inquiry, and courts in both Canada and the United States at the very same time that he was expressing opinions on torture in The New York Times."

Source...

h/t Ardvark

1 comment:

Patrick Ross said...

I'm personally unsurprised to see Michael Byers targetting Ignatieff (quite justifiably) over this.

Byers very clearly wants to be Ignatieff, right down to the abandonment of very simple universal principles vis a vis foreign policy issues.

This is, after all, a guy who thinks that Iranian prison guards beating and raping a Canadian citizen to death shouldn't result in so much as the interruption of diplomatic relations with that country.