Human Rights Watch joins partner organizations in sending a
letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff and Richard Skinner of the Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), regarding the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian transferred from New York to Syria where he was reportedly tortured. The letter urges the immediate and entire release of the Inspector General's report on Arar, OIG-08-18, “The Removal of a Canadian Citizen to Syria.” The one-page unclassified summary that has been released is both an uninformative and inadequate representation of the investigation results, and fails to address the concerns regarding the legality of the procedures by which the US government removed Arar to Syria, and its practices in addressing similar cases. The results of the investigation into the Arar matter are essential to assessing the adequacy of US procedures for upholding its international legal obligations not to transfer any persons to countries where they are at risk of torture.
