Last week, the United States government transferred an Algerian national, imprisoned for the last eight years at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back to his home country.

The Supreme Court’s refusal this week to hear the claims of Maher Arar, a Canadian sent to Syria to be interrogated under torture in 2002, is appropriately being condemned as another example of the U.S. avoiding any legal or moral responsibility for government- sanctioned torture.

While the Supreme Court studiously looks the other way on multiple appeals attempting to hold to account abusive government actors, as in its repudiation of the final appeal for justice from Canadian Maher Arar, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals continues to dismantle Boumediene, and two crucial rulings from the new Court of Military Commission Review are overdue with regard to the legitimacy of the Guantanamo Military Commissions, the 2006 Military Commissions Act, and convictions thereunder.

There is nothing about torture that is good or positive. The act itself is on of the most brutal and heinous that humans have ever committed. The affect on a society that condones torture is one of rising fear and brutality. The information (if it can be called that) gained under torture is so suspect as to be worthless. Perhaps the worst aspect is that torture, once accepted is used not only on enemies or bad people, but innocent victims as well.

On Monday the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of one such innocent victim of torture, Mr. Maher Arar, a Syrian born Canadian citizen. In 2002 he was returning to Canada from a trip abroad. At a stop over at JFK Airport he was detained by the US Government and held in solitary confinement for two weeks without access to an attorney. Mr. Arar was then deported, not to his nation of citizenship, Canada but, to Syria and put in the hands of the Syrian intelligence services, who are well known for their torture activities.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

In a summary of recent news in the fight against torture, a D.C. judge has dismissed all charges against demonstrators arrested in an anti-Guantanamo demonstration last January. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has announced it will not review the District Court’s decision refusing to review Canadian citizen Maher Arar case against U.S. officials for their role in rendering him to Syria to be tortured. At the same time, the Canadian RCMP is revealed to be investigating both Syrian and U.S. officials for this crime.