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- Article from August 2006 by n. mallory
Benamar Benatta’s Story in Brief
Benamar Benatta is a 33 year old Algerian citizen who trained as an aeronautical engineer. He came to North America to flee political persecution and threats to his life while serving in the Algerian Armed Forces. On September 5, 2001 Mr. Benatta crossed the border into Canada and claimed political asylum. His biggest fear was being returned to Algeria where he was certain to be tortured or killed for deserting the military. Canadian authorities put Mr. Benatta into immigration detention while they tried to ascertain his identity.
While in Canadian custody and unbeknown to Mr. Benatta, terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York City and other targets on September 11, 2001. Canadian officials alerted U.S. officials to the presence of Mr. Benatta, presumably because he is a Muslim man who knows something about airplanes. Without a hearing, without counsel and without conducting proceedings in his first language (French), Mr. Benatta was unceremoniously driven over the border in the back of a car by Canadian officials and handed over to U.S. officials on September 12, 2001. This was an illegal transfer. This action by Canadian officials was the beginning of a long nightmare for Mr. Benatta.
Mr. Benatta was held in the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, New York, where he was treated as a suspect in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. He was beaten. He was abused. He was held in conditions that the United Nations described as torture. He was forgotten.
Mr. Benatta was actually cleared of any terrorist activity by the FBI in November 2001; however, he was never told that he was cleared because he was being held incommunicado and did not have access to a lawyer.
In all, Mr. Benatta, an innocent man, spent nearly FIVE years of his life in American prisons in conditions that could be described as torture as found by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in an Opinion adopted in 2004. Mr. Benatta also suffered serious abuse at the hands of his prison guards, which is documented by the U.S. Department of Justice. The Canadian Government, various agencies and government officials all bear some measure of responsibility for Mr. Benatta’s ordeal. Mr. Benatta has been allowed to return to Canada to resume his claim for refugee status. His application is pending. He is trying to get his life back. He is trying to find out the truth about why this happened to him.
Read Benatta’s Story for more.
“I’m worrying every day, to be honest,” said Benatta. “…ask any Algerian… he will tell you what will happen to me if I am deported.” He said, that if he is returned to Algeria, he could face torture, lifelong imprisonment or even execution. —ACLU
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” —Article 9, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the U.S. helped create and which the U.S. is a signatory to!
“It is now apparent that the overwhelming majority of the men who were detained had simply overstayed their visas or committed similar civil immigration infractions that, ordinarily, would not have led to detention at all.” —ACLU
Actions against Benamar Benatta and others “…violates human rights principles found in two important international instruments:
· The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which the U.S. helped create after World War II)
· The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (whose provisions are similar to our Bill of Rights)
“The United States is a signatory to both these documents.” —ACLU
By asking the United Nations to shine a global spotlight on the U.S. government’s indiscriminate roundup of immigrants, the ACLU warns the government that it cannot escape justice through secrecy. The United States government has done everything in its power to hide its actions from public view. The government refused to disclose the names of the men it secretly held, and then deported them before they could tell their stories. The government clearly hoped that these immigrants had disappeared forever. But just as the United States is crossing borders abroad in the name of security, we will cross borders in the name of justice to vindicate human rights abuses. —ACLU
Benatta’s “fears about returning to Algeria center on the country’s violent Islamic fundamentalist movement as well as its military. “I had a problem with the terrorists who wanted to kill me and the military, which was beating and torturing people,” he told The Washington Post.” —ACLU
Ahilan Arulanantham, a former staff attorney at the ACLU’s Immigrants Rights Project, recalls what he saw and heard at the Brooklyn detention center:
“I remember being very struck that the men’s wrists were shackled, their legs were shackled at the ankle, their arms were shackled to their waist. There was a guard on each arm and another guard behind and a guard in front.
“The detainees described physical abuse, that they were thrown up against the wall, that lights were on constantly, that it was freezing. They tried to put blankets on themselves, but guards would get angry about that when they had ‘counts.’” —ACLU
…the ACLU and other groups filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding government documents in response to reports that it is intentionally sending detainees to countries known to engage in torture and other illegal interrogation techniques. If successful, this action will help us determine whether the U.S. has violated the Convention Against Torture, one of the few human rights treaties that the U.S. has actually signed and ratified. —ACLU
I believe that the U.S. has indeed violated any or all of the conventions against torture that are presently in place.
It’s very sad.
Ruschia