OneWorld.net (U.S.)

SAN FRANCISCO, Sep 19 (OneWorld) - The White House and dissident Senate Republicans began a fresh round of talks Tuesday over how to treat and prosecute terrorism suspects. President George W. Bush is having difficulty gaining approval for his plan because it would legalize interrogation techniques many see as torture including mock-drowning, stripping, and hooding of detainees.

''We are optimistic we can work out a solution,'' Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) told reporters after giving a convocation address last night at Boston College. ''I think there's a willingness to try to get this resolved,'' he added.

Senate Republicans, among them McCain, who was himself a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict, say Bush is disregarding the Geneva Conventions, damaging the United States' moral standing, and putting American troops at risk should they end up in enemy custody.

Civil rights attorneys are particularly concerned, especially since Bush and McCain's plans have a number of provisions in common.

Both bills would make it impossible for prisoners held outside the United States by the United States to challenge their incarceration as unlawful, noted Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents detainees held in the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"Both bills would take all our Guantanamo cases from the courts," Ratner added. "Both bills would exempt the CIA and other U.S. military officials from prosecution for the kind of torture that they did at Guantanamo."

Ratner told OneWorld that if either Bush's or McCain's plan becomes law, "we'll be in court the next day."

Treatment and transparent justice for Guantanamo and other detainees from the "war on terror" is all the more important given a report released Monday by the Canadian government on the case of Maher Arar.

Arar, a Canadian computer technician of Syrian descent, was detained by U.S. authorities on his way home from a family vacation in Tunisia nearly four years ago. He was brought into custody by federal authorities during a stop-over at John F. Kennedy airport and was taken to an immigration facility in New York.

Two weeks later he was secretly flown to Jordan aboard a Gulfstream Jet. Arar ended up in Syria where he was held in a tiny cell and repeatedly tortured.

For weeks even his family didn't know where he was.

On Monday, the Canadian government admitted for the first time that Arar was completely innocent. Justice Dennis O'Connor released the findings of a two-year major investigation into the disappearance of Arar, writing, ''I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada.''

The official inquiry said that there is no evidence that Canadian officials played a direct role in his detention or deportation. However Justice O'Connor found that the U.S. government's decision to send Arar to Syria was likely based on inaccurate and misleading information provided by Canadian authorities.

For Arar's attorney, Julian Falconer, the case provides a cautionary warning for how governments should not act in prosecuting what Bush and his allies have dubbed the "war on terror."

"The biases that exist in the post-9/11 era really came to fruition in this case," Falconer told OneWorld. "A man who is of Middle Eastern background, who is a Canadian citizen, who was nothing but a constructive contributing member of society, was stopped by the U.S. government and thrown in jail for thirteen months. It happened because of biases about his background, his age, and what religion he and his wife are."

Falconer said he understands why Bush is pushing for special rules to try terror suspects but that doesn't mean the entire justice system should be thrown out.

"It's quite true that we have to get used to the fact that our freedoms will have to be curtailed, but that doesn't swing you to the other extreme," he said. "A classic example of the other extreme is the Guantanamo Bay nightmare. People are being detained for years and years without any process whatsoever. That's what I would call the other extreme."