Gommery what...?
Are Canadians comfortable with the United States exporting interrogation of Canadian citizens to countries that use torture? The more important Canadian inquiry - Arar Commission, Factual Inquiry
"[Mr. Arar] had been held in the Metropolitan Detention Centre in manhattan for eleven days (September 27th to October 7th), being interrogated. He was initially denied access to a lawyer, and had little food or sleep. His request to pray during the interrogation sessions had also been denied. His interrorgators had insulted him and used "bad words", which he found deeply upsetting. At 3:00 am one morning, he was awakened and told that the Director of the US Immigation and Naturalization Service had ordered that Mr. Arar be sent, not to Canada, as he says that he constantly requested, but to Syria. He told me that at this moment he began to cry and immediately said that he would be tortured. He felt "destroyed".
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George brought with him into the room a black cable, which might have been a shredded electrical cable. It was about two feet long. It was probably made of rubber, but was not hollow... George told Mr. Arar to open his right hand. George then raised the cable high and brought it down hard...
Sometimes he was blindfolded and left to stand in the hallway for an hour or more. The screaming continued. It is notable that the only time Mr. Arar completely broke down while I was interviewing him was when he described the screams of women being beaten and the cries of the abbies that some of the women had with them in the detention centre.
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Day three, October 11, 2002, was the most "intensive for mr. Arar. He was questioned for sixteen to eighteen hours, with great physical and psychological abuse. The questions focussed in part on Mr. Almalki. Mr. Arar was beaten with the black cable on numerous occasions throughout the day, and threatened with electric shocks, "the chair" and "the tire". The pattern was for Mr. Arar to receive three or four lashes with the cable, then to be questioned, and then for the beating to begin again. After a while, he became so weak that he was disoriented.
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Mr. Arar describes a similar reaction to that of Mr. Almalki. Over time, as the beatings became less intense, it was the daily horror of living in the tiny, dark and damp cell all alone and with no reading material (except later, the Koran) that came to be the most disturbing aspect of the detention. Whereas at first the cell was a refuge from the infliction of physical pain, later it became a "torture" in its own right. Mr. Arar describes nights alone in his cell where he could not sleep on the cold concrete floor. He had to turn every fifteen minutes or so. He was constantly thinking of his family, and worried about their safety. He was "bombarded by memories". He remained in this cell for ten months, ten days, and saw almost no sunlight except for when he was transferred for consular visits. His first visit to the courtyard of the prison did not take place until April 2003. Mr. Arar describes the cell as "a grave" and as a "slow death".
posted by Carla @ 7:44 PM
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