This is a pretty heinous thing on the US and Canadian’ governments part.
Our government took a man from an airport in New York City and handed him over to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months. I think I’ve made a decent case that he was probably innocent; that this was done with the knowledge and approval of fairly important government officials; and that this was not some freak accident or isolated occurrence. This happened, and there is no reason to believe it will not happen again. (We are less chummy with Syria these days, but that may change and there is never any shortage of nasty regimes in the world. And the agreement with Canada about this case is incomplete, and only applies to Canadian citizens anyway.)
Just out of curiosity, do you think it’s okay for countries to refuse to hand over criminals to the US because we they may face the death pentalty? To a lot of the world, it’s a barbaric act and morally equal (or worse) than torture.
This came up after the WTC bombing when persons suspected of having been involved in some way with 9/11 where arrested in various european countires. Most western european countries have laws against extraditing suspects to face a possible death penalty, and usually try to exhort a guarentee that the prosecutor will not seek capital punishment before agreeing to extradite. I remember Bill O’Reilly bitching about it on his show, complaing that the french should stay out of the US justice system.