There Can Be No Security Without Human Rights

Just what I've been trying to hammer home all along (just four examples here, here, here and here):

No Security Without Human Rights
Omar Khadr, Maher Arar and the testimony of an FBI agent
By Hilary Homes

Unless you’ve been in a bubble, you’ve heard that FBI interrogator Robert Fuller testified during pre-trial hearings in Guantánamo on Jan 19, 2009 that – during a series of interrogations in October 2002 at Bagram Airbase – Omar Khadr recognized a photo of Maher Arar and said he’d seen him in al-Qaida safe houses in Kabul and possibly in a training camp.

What are we to make of this? It’s being treated by many in the media and elsewhere as a startling new revelation.

I urge you, gentle reader, to treat this information lightly. Think critically before you breathe more life into this story.

Consider the following:

In 2006, the Arar Commission cleared Maher Arar of any connection to terrorism or related groups. A group of highly qualified people worked for years on this Commission, cross-examining witnesses and reviewing extensive files including information from foreign sources.

The former Minister of Public Safety, Stockwell Day, subsequently reviewed the confidential US files on Maher Arar. That file must have included this information from the FBI interrogations of Omar Khadr at Bagram in 2002. Minister Day concluded that there was nothing in those files to either challenge the findings of the Arar Commission or justify maintaining Mr Arar’s name on a no-fly list. It was after reviewing those files that the Canadian government issued an apology and compensation to Mr Arar.

Omar Khadr was 15 years old and seriously wounded when his interrogations started at Bagram Airbase in the summer of 2002. He was reportedly interrogated some 40 times by various agencies prior to his transfer to Guantánamo later that year. At best the conditions were highly coercive. At worst they amounted to torture and ill-treatment. A number of guards and interrogators were found responsible for fatally injuring a detainee during questioning in December 2002 at Bagram Airbase. This is the context in which this information was collected by the FBI agent.

The military commission proceedings fall far short of fair trials. This is not a setting in which either the source or the alleged information itself can be truly tested.

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