In his speech this week to his anti-extremism conclave in Washington, President Obama declared that “former extremists have the opportunity to speak out, speak the truth about terrorist groups, and oftentimes they can be powerful messengers in debunking these terrorist ideologies.”<\/p>\n
But what about former victims of government extremism speaking out?<\/b><\/p>\n
Maher Arar is a Canadian who was kidnapped at John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002 and renditioned to Syria, where he was tortured at the behest of the U.S. government. I mentioned his case in a 2007 American Conservative <\/a>article optimistically titled, “Will\u00a0Torture Bring Down Bush?”:<\/p>\n But the evidence of CIA \u201ctorture taxis\u201d secretly racing around the globe carrying gagged, sedated detainees to some of the most brutal regimes in the world proved too much for Bush to deny. He revised his defense in April 2005: \u201cWe operate within the law and we send people to countries where they say they are not going to torture people.\u201d But then why would the U.S. go to the trouble of kidnapping people\u2014Canadian Maher Arar, who was grabbed at JFK Airport and renditioned to Syria or Australian Mamduh Habib, seized in Pakistan and flown to Egypt, for instance\u2014and turning them over to governments the U.S. has long denounced for using torture?<\/p>\n I also blogged about his case in 2010,\u00a0“Obama Administration: Don’t Question Sincerity of\u00a0Torturers<\/a>” \u00a0–<\/p>\n The Supreme Court disgraced itself on Monday by torpedoing the appeal of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was kidnapped at John F. Kennedy International Airport and sent by the U.S. government to Syria for torturing.<\/p>\n The Canadian government has publicly apologized to Arar for providing false information to the U.S. government about Arar\u2019s suspicious connections.\u00a0 The U.S. government has refused to admit it did anything wrong in shipping Arar to the Middle East to be tortured at U.S. behest.<\/p>\n The Obama administration vigorously opposed Arar\u2019s motion to get justice and to discover the details of the U.S. government\u2019s role in his horror trip.\u00a0 Obama\u2019s Justice Department told the court\u00a0 that permitting discovery in Arar\u2019s case could result in unfairly exposing or scrutinizing \u201cthe motives and sincerity of the United States officials who concluded that petitioner could be removed to Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n Now we also have sovereign immunity for the reputation of torturers and torture enablers???<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Arar has had a series of excellent Twitter messages this week on Obama’s extremism confab:<\/p>\n Trying 2eradicate radicalization w\/o revisiting foreign policy is like a pilot trying 2land while placing a blindfold on his eyes #CVESummit<\/a><\/p>\n — Maher Arar (@ArarMaher) February 19, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n