Salon: When Did We Become Like Syria?

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/14/arar

When did we become like Syria?
As I watched a surreal torture case unfold in a U.S. courtroom, the line between dictatorship and democracy seemed to disappear.

By Alia Malek

Nov. 14, 2007 | When visiting my grandmother's house in Damascus a few years ago, I never could have imagined sitting one day in a U.S. court, listening to the U.S. government defend its covert transfer of a Canadian citizen to Syria to be tortured.

Yet, that's precisely what happened last Friday in a U.S. circuit court in New York, with the beginning of Maher Arar's appeal of a decision last year by a district court to throw out his suit against the U.S. government. Arar's case was the first to challenge in court the Bush administration's use of rendition -- the process of secretly handing over people to other countries where torture is used during interrogations.

Arar's story is chilling. A Syrian-born Canadian citizen and high-tech worker, Arar was detained in 2002 at JFK Airport while he was on his way back to Canada after a vacation. He was questioned about alleged links to al-Qaida. He was denied access to counsel and access to a court. Twelve days later he was sent in chains and shackles to Syria. There he was tortured for nearly a year and coerced into making a false confession, before being released after the tireless campaigning of his wife.

Under pressure from Canadian human rights organizations and citizens, Canada announced a commission of inquiry into Arar's case, which cleared Arar of all terrorism allegations. Now Arar seeks damages from the U.S. government for its role.

The story is already disturbing, surreal, Kafkaesque. It also left me with this realization: The sharp line I had drawn as a child -- between what could happen to a person under a dictatorship like Syria's and what could never happen to a person under a constitutional democracy like that of the U.S. -- seemed to be disappearing.

It was this contrast that had defined me as a Syrian- American. Not merely because it meant I had a passport my relatives in Syria could only covet, but also because I was confident that I had rights. I believed that meant I would never disappear off the street into oblivion -- with no access to a lawyer or judge, and without anyone even being able to know my whereabouts, let alone help me.

I don't know if I'd ever have understood what it means to have rights as early as I did, had I not spent time in Syria. The reality of the police state follows you everywhere there, and even as a child I was aware of it. Like Mona Lisa's eyes, those of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad were always upon us, his portrait everywhere we went. He would glare from the dashboards and windshields of taxis, where the drivers -- notorious informants -- had cut his photograph into the shape of a heart, often in triplicate. He was looming from public buildings that had the same portrait blown up to billboard size. We drove around traffic circles, anchored by larger-than-life statues of the Syrian leader. Like a license to operate, his picture was also displayed in shops, restaurants, hair salons, bus stations and private offices.

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