Another article on Benamar Benatta

This article does not give all the details very clearly. Benatta was held in Canada pending a hearing for refugee status but was delivered by the Canadians back to the Americans. The Canadian officials say it was voluntary, Benatta says it was involuntary. Benatta thought he was being taken to a different place of custody in Canada. You can see there were six days from the apprehension to when he was sent back to the US into US custody. No will ever find out what went on in the negotiation between US and Canada and it is doubtful he will ever be able to sue anyone successfully. Almost all of these suits fail because the evidence is classified. Justice is a thing of the past since 9/11.


Algerian held in U.S. nearly 5 years wants Canada's role probed
Last Updated: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 | 4:10 PM ET
CBC News
Lawyers for a former Algerian air force lieutenant who spent nearly five years in American custody — despite being cleared by the FBI — are calling for an inquiry into Canada's role in his detention.


Benamar Benatta spent nearly five years in detention centres in Buffalo and Brooklyn, even though he was cleared of any links to terrorism.
(CBC) "I can't go on living like this. I need clarification … why I was treated in such a way," Benamar Benatta said during a news conference in Toronto Wednesday.

The former military avionics technician was detained by Canadian border guards on Sept. 5, 2001, at the Peace Bridge crossing between Buffalo, N.Y., and Fort Erie, Ont., as he applied for asylum. He had arrived with an expired visa.

Canadian officials handed him to U.S. authorities on Sept. 11, 2001, one of roughly 1,200 mostly Muslim men arrested by the U.S. after the terror attacks that day. He's believed to be one of the last of these detainees to be freed.

Benatta, a Muslim, spent nearly the next five years in detention centres in Buffalo and Brooklyn, even though the FBI cleared him of any links to terrorism in November 2001.



His lawyers said they have sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day asking for a review of "any and all actions of Canadian officials in relation to his ordeal."

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said Wednesday that he wouldn't comment on the matter until he knew all the details.

There had been earlier suggestions from Ottawa that Benatta voluntarily went to the U.S., but the federal government says it has no documentation to support that.

U.S.-Algerian exchange program
Benatta first arrived in the U.S. in December 2000 on a six-month visa to take part in training seminars in Baltimore for defence and military conglomerate Northrop Grumman. It was part of an exchange program between the American and Algerian militaries, he said.

He didn't return to Algeria, saying he feared for his life if he returned. His lawyers said he can't give any details about what happened in Algeria because his Canadian refugee claim is still pending.

He lived briefly in New York City before taking a bus to Buffalo on Sept. 5, 2001. He crossed the Peace Bridge into Canada, where he filed for asylum.

Canadian border officials declared him a person of interest, and held him in a cell in their offices while he was investigated.

On the evening of Sept. 11, Benatta said, U.S. security officials, including the FBI, came to his cell and questioned him about the attacks.

Taken to N.Y. detention centre
They took him to a holding cell in upstate New York, later transferring him to a high-security detention centre in Brooklyn, where he said he was kept in solitary confinement.

In November 2001, the FBI cleared him of any connection to terrorism, something he didn't learn until five months later, when he was transferred to a detention centre in Buffalo and given his first access to a lawyer.

While there, he also learned he faced charges of carrying false identification papers.

That charge was dropped in 2003, when a U.S. federal magistrate issued a scathing report into Benatta's detention, saying federal prosecutors and FBI and immigration agents took part in a "sham" to justify their actions.

Benatta was then transferred into U.S. immigration detention, where, his lawyers said, he went through a series of immigration reviews and appeals.

American officials hadn't ruled on his application when he was transferred back to Canada July 20, 2006, after Ottawa agreed to offer him temporary residence while he sought refugee status.

Benatta, who has no family in Canada, lives in Toronto on an allowance Ottawa provides refugee claimants.

His lawyers said they don't know why Benatta was released by the Americans, only that there were high-level negotiations between Canada and the U.S.

"What went on to allow him to return is completely and entirely unclear," said lawyer Nicole Chrolavicius.

Claims of torture
Benatta, who was 27 when he was first detained, said he was humiliated and tortured while in American custody.

U.S. officials wrote 'WTC' — meaning World Trade Center — on the door of his brightly lit cell, shackled his wrists and feet, bound his chest with a chain, denied him a lawyer and time to sleep, he said.

When asked whether Benatta would seek compensation, Chrolavicius said lawyers haven't yet launched a statement of claim but haven't ruled anything out.

"I know it's time for me to face what I went through and put it behind me and try to go on with my life, if I can," Benatta said. "I just need some explanation."

Benatta has recently been denied standing at Justice Frank Iacobucci's inquiry into the deportations of three Canadian citizens: Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

Chrolavicius said that was not a surprise, given the narrow scope of the terms of the inquiry

Another article on Benamar Benatta

It will be interesting to see if Benatta's case is investigated by the Iacobucci inqiry. The terms of reference refer only to three other cases and all involve Syria, none the US. However, the case does involve what seem to be inappropriate action by Canadian authorities.

Algerian beaten in U.S. custody
By: Reuel S. Amdur / The Arab American News
2007-03-31

Benamar Benatta is asking for standing at the Commission of Inquiry headed by Judge Frank Iacobucci. The commission is looking into Canada's possible role in the mistreatment of three Muslim men in Syria and Egypt, a project strongly recommended in the report of the Arar judicial inquiry.

Bematta's story does not involve Syria or Egypt. He claims to have been beaten and otherwise mistreated while in American custody, having spent close to five years in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center. His misadventures began back in his native Algeria.

Benatta was an air force lieutenant who says he was jailed for refusing to take part in brutalizing civilians. When released, he was sent to the United States for training on aviation electronic equipment. Rather than return to Algeria, he made his way to Canada, where he was put in an immigration holding center, just before 9/11.

Shortly after, he was returned to the United States, willingly according to the Canadian government, but otherwise according to Benatta. Canadian officials acknowledge sheepishly that they have lost the documentation on his return to American soil.

Once he was cleared by the FBI of terrorism-related suspicions, he was allowed to return to Canada, where he is pursuing a refugee claim and living in Toronto.

Benamar Benatta

I am copying this from my other blog It may be of interest to US citizens and others since it is another case where someone has ended up being imprisoned because of the hysteria and witch hunts directed at suspicious Muslims after 9/11. The best one can say about what the US did is that it might very well have been worse for Benatta if he had been deported to Algeria.

Algerian wants probe to review his case
Man says his ordeal similar to cases of Canadian Muslims tortured in Mideast
JEFF SALLOT

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — A defector from the Algerian air force, detained by Canadian authorities just days before the 9/11 attacks and then deported to the United States as a terrorism suspect, is fighting to have his case investigated by a federal commission of inquiry.

Benamar Benatta, 32, who was held by the United States for almost five years, said there are important similarities between his case and those of three Canadian Muslim men who were tortured in the Middle East.

The inquiry, set up by the Conservative government in December to probe possible Canadian involvement in the three torture cases, begins its first hearings today. Lawyers for Mr. Benatta are asking for legal standing so they can present evidence of what they say is Canadian complicity in their client's illegal detention in the United States after the al-Qaeda attacks.

Frank Iacobucci, a former Supreme Court judge, who heads the inquiry, will also hear from five human-rights and Islamic groups seeking legal standing and federal financing for lawyers' bills.


Mr. Benatta's story is largely unknown in Canada, although it attracted some coverage in The Washington Post during his long struggle to be released from a U.S. detention centre.

The Algerian man is now living in Toronto. He is seeking political asylum in Canada, but has not yet had a refugee-determination hearing.

Canadian immigration officials granted him temporary residency last summer after they were unable to locate legal papers that might have justified his deportation from Canada in 2001.

In an affidavit filed with the Iacobucci inquiry, Mr. Benatta says in the 1990s he was a lieutenant in the Algerian air force with an engineering degree in aviation electronics.

He says he was jailed for insubordination for five months when he refused to participate in the "unlawful and unconscionable acts of the Algerian military" against civilians. His life has also been threatened by an Algerian Islamic militia, he says.

Mr. Benatta returned to military service and was sent to train on new aviation electronics equipment in the United States. In 2001, he deserted by refusing to go home to Algeria. Fluent in French, he felt his asylum and resettlement chances were better in Canada than in the United States.

He crossed the border at Fort Erie, Ont., on Sept. 5. Six days later, he was still being held for identification and processing at a Canadian immigration detention centre when terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

What happened next is subject to dispute. Canadian officials say Mr. Benatta voluntarily agreed to be returned to the United States. However, "there is no documentation to support this," one Canadian immigration official admits in a letter sent last year to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Willingly or not, Mr. Benatta was driven back across the border to Buffalo and handed over to U.S. authorities. He spent nearly five years at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the same lock-up where Canadian Maher Arar was held before he was deported to Syria.

In his affidavit, Mr. Benatta says the Americans treated him harshly, kept him in solitary confinement for long periods in a cell with the lights on 24 hours a day and deprived him of sleep. He says he was beaten regularly. "I repeatedly had my head slammed against the wall."

(The mistreatment of Muslim prisoners at the Brooklyn lock-up has been documented in a report by the U.S. Justice Department's inspector-general.)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation cleared him of involvement with terrorism. But the Americans continued to hold him on charges that he used false identification to remain in the United States after his defection.

He was released last summer when Canadian immigration officials informed the Americans that Mr. Benatta would receive a temporary residency permit while he pursued his refugee claim.

Canadian records show "Mr. Benatta would be allowed to return to Canada should he wish once the U.S. authorities had finalized processing of his case," Randy Orr, a Canadian immigration official, wrote July 11, 2006.