Gonzales Caught Making False Statements Re-Innocent Canadian Torture Case

[kpete]

Atty General Gonzales Caught Making False Statements About Innocent Canadian's Torture Case...
AG Gonzales: We don't send people abroad to be tortured. DHS handles that now.
September 21, 2006

In an embarrassing turnabout, the Department of Justice backed away Wednesday from a denial by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales of responsibility for the treatment of a Canadian who was seized by American authorities in 2002. The man was deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned and beaten.

Asked at a news conference on Tuesday about a Canadian commission's finding that the man, Maher Arar, was wrongly sent to Syria and tortured there, Mr. Gonzales replied, "Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria." He added, "I'm not aware that he was tortured."

On Wednesday, a Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Gonzales had intended to make only a narrow point: that deportations are now handled by the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice.

...................

Asked about Mr. Gonzales’s remarks, Mr. Arar said in an interview on Wednesday with National Public Radio that American officials had sent him to Syria despite his protests that he would be tortured there.
“The facts speak for themselves, you know,” Mr. Arar said. “The report clearly concluded that I was tortured. And for him to say that he does not know about the case or does not know I was tortured is really outrageous.”

more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/21/world/americas/21canada.html?ex=1316491200&en=c01819e14cf573a8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

[joanski0]

1. Senator John Cornyn also said that he

wasn't very familiar with the case. Cornyn was on Washington Journal this morning when a caller asked him about this. When you're on the spot, plead ignorance.

Also, when a caller asked Cornyn what part of "Give me liberty, or give me death" that he didn't understand, Cornyn answered that he didn't understand the question.

[malaise]

3. Wasn't that priceless

They have no shame.

sp.

[me b zola]

4. I heard that this morning

I almost began a thread about it...it kind of sums up the rw point of view, "Give me liberty or give me death...I don't understand what that means."

[Supersedeas]

6. who-what: never heard of Arar or al-Libi: oh, both confessed falsely

after being tortured...interesting...quaint even!!!

[burf]

2. Just how many countries are there named

Syria? Surely this place where Mr Arar was sent cannot be the same state that supports terrorism that Bush mentioned in his UN speech. Why would we have dealings with them? :sarcasm:

[Tyler Durden]

5. Wait a sec...That wasn't a PARODY???

Yeah I knew it was real.

How these people sleep at night is beyond me.

[tuvor]

7. Error of fact: Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not "deported" to Syria.

If deported, it would have had to have been to Canada.