Terrorism
2nd Circuit Tosses Extraordinary Rendition Suit Against Ashcroft
Posted Nov 3, 2009, 06:38 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A federal appeals court has ruled a Canadian engineer can’t sue former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other government officials for transferring him to Syria in 2002, where he claims he was tortured.
The New York City-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 7-4 en banc ruling that Maher Arar cannot sue absent legislation establishing damages for his type of case, according to the New York Times and the New York Law Journal. Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote the majority opinion.
“We decline to create, on our own, a new cause of action against officers and employees of the federal government,” Jacobs said. It is for the executive branch to “decide how to implement extraordinary rendition, and for the elected members of Congress—and not for us as judges—to decide whether an individual may seek compensation” for a constitutional violation.
Jacobs said judicial review of the case would “offend the separation of powers.”
Arar was detained at Kennedy International Airport as he was returning to Canada from a vacation, according to the stories. He was held in New York for 13 days before being transferred to Syria. Canadian officials originally suspected Arar had ties to al-Qaida, but later concluded he was not involved with terrorism.
Georgetown University law professor David Cole represented Arar. The decision, he said in a statement, "effectively places executive officials above the law, even when accused of a conscious conspiracy to torture."
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