In other words: A discussion of The Bush Administration
America under Bush: We send Canadians to Syria to be tortured - your grandchildren's tax dollars at work
Delivered Into Hell by U.S. War on Terror
I recently spent 10 1/2 months in a grave-sized cell in Syria, unsure why I was there, unsure how to get out. Fear paralyzed my wits when I needed them most. I was beaten and I was tortured and I was constantly scared. Every day I worried that I would never be released, that I would disappear into that concrete grave forever.
Why was I being held? I still don't really know. I am not a terrorist. I am not a member of Al Qaeda. I am a Syrian-born Canadian. A father and a husband. A telecommunications engineer. I have never been in trouble with the police and have always been a good citizen.
My ordeal began on the afternoon of Sept. 26, 2002, when my flight back from a family vacation in Tunisia stopped over in New York and American immigration officials pulled me aside to answer a few questions. At first it was only an inconvenience — thorough airport security, post 9/11-style. But my questioners persisted. And when someone waved a copy of the 1997 lease for my Ottawa apartment, I was shocked and confused. What was going on here? Who gave them the lease and what was its significance to them? For the first time, I began to realize that the questioning was not simply routine.
My interrogation in the United States took days. Shuttling in shackles among immigration officials, FBI agents and police officers, I asked repeatedly for a lawyer but was told that I didn't have the right to one because I was not an American citizen. There were no phone calls home either.
Only after days of often abusive, insulting, degrading questioning about whom I knew and what I was up to (besides computer work for my Boston-based employer) was I finally permitted to use a telephone.
But still I couldn't see the full picture. In the early hours of Oct. 8, 2002, I was formally notified that the U.S. government had classified information about me that it would not reveal — and it would be deporting me that very day, without a word to my family, to the long-forgotten place of my birth, Syria.
To this day, unnamed American officials continue to allege that I have ties to Al Qaeda, although I have not seen the details and I have not been charged with a crime.
I hadn't been to Syria since moving to Canada with my family when I was 17. For half my life I have had no connection at all to that country. Yet I would surely be tortured, I told my New York captors, because I'm a Sunni Muslim; because my mother's cousin had been accused of being in the Muslim Brotherhood and imprisoned for nine years; because I had left the country before undertaking my military service.
My arguments were useless. Soon I was in a small private jet, chained and panic-stricken; then in a succession of cars in Jordan and Syria, blindfolded and beaten repeatedly; and finally placed in that shallow grave.
I describe my cell in Syria as a grave because it was just 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, 7 feet high and unlit. While I was there I sometimes felt on the verge of death after beatings with a black electrical cable about two inches thick. They mostly aimed for my palms but sometimes missed and hit my wrists. Other times, I was left alone in a special "waiting room" within earshot of others' screams. At the end of the day, they would tell me that tomorrow would be worse. In those 10 1/2 months I lost about 40 pounds. I never saw, but only heard, the agony of my fellow prisoners. I was so scared I urinated on myself twice.
Why paste more?.. there is enough here to declare the Bush administration a criminal organisation.
- rob 2:49 PM - [PermaLink] -
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