Here's a little bit of knowledge from the book Ghost Plane by Stephen Grey.
In the prologue you will find a short bit about Maher Arar, a Canadian technician who was deported from New York to Syria in a private American jet. Every day Arar was taken from his tiny cell to face Salloum and his team of interrogators. One of the worst tortures one can expect is known as the German Chair. The apparatus is a metal frame with no backrest or seat and is used to stretch a victim's spine to near the breaking point.
Sounds very much like the Medieval rack doesn't it? Today we can make jokes about the rack because we believe it to be something ancient and used when people were much less civilized than they should be today. It's not so funny now that something quite similar is in use upon people even today. It is even less likely to joke about when we realize that the Canadian and American governments were complicit with Syria and knew full well what was to be expected.
Maher Arar was spared this torture but many others weren't so lucky. Arar was beaten upon his back, his buttocks and his feet with two inch electrical cable. Every day.
Day and night he could hear the screams around him from his tiny rat infested cell. He was barely able to stretch out in one direction. There was no daylight in his cell; just a glow from a small hole in the concrete above his head.
Next door to Arar was a fellow Canadian named Abdulla Almalki. Maher was accused of being part of al Queda because, in part, he was a friend of Abdulla back in Ottawa, Canada. As with Arar Abdulla was cleared of wrong doing and was cleared of all charges levelled against him.
Another prisoner was Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a business man from Hamburg, Germany. He is a big man and his cell too small to accept his body length. For 2 ½ years he lived in this cramped way except when taken out for torture. There were no charges laid against him. Nevertheless, he was considered a main operator in the plan of the Twin Towers. Two months after the Twin Towers the Americans had him picked up in Morocco.
According to a 'secret' Germab n report Mohammed was briefly interrogated in Germany by the Americans and then, by American request, flown to Syria. While tortured by Salloum and his team he was repeatedly asked questions that came direct from the CIA. Like Maher Arar Mohammed's home country was complicit in his being sent to Syria for torturing.
There is so much more to these stories so please get a copy at your library or book store of Ghost Plane by Stephen Grey.
It is important to note that Syria is considered by the US and other same thinking countries as a state sponsor of terrorism. President Bush (the Liar of America) would rightly condemn the Syrian regime for its 'legacy of torture', oppression, misery and ruin'. Yet, the Americans made full use of Syria's dark history to do America's dirty work for them.
RC
