Maher Arar: Some justice at last

By Vivek Krishnamurthy

One aspect of this afternoon's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings that have received very little attention in the American media is Sen. Patrick Leahy's questioning of the Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, on the case of Maher Arar.

Mr. Arar is a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin who was detained at Kennedy Airport in 2002 and "rendered" to Syria, where he was detained in a coffin-sized cell for a year and subjected to brutal torture. The U.S. government alleged that Mr. Arar has connections to Al Qaeda, but a recent judicial inquiry in Canada concluded that there is not a scintilla of evidence to support this assertion.

At today's Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Leahy tore into Mr. Gonzales and the Bush Administration's depraved policy of extraordinary rendition with an intensity rarely seen in sedate Senate proceedings. For your listening pleasure, I have uploaded audio of the hearing from CBC Radio. You can hear it by clicking here.

Your faith in Congress, and in America, will be restored.