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At Toronto film festival art immitates renditions
2007-09-08
As CIA director Michael Hayden on Friday defended the US government's renditions of terrorist suspects, the Toronto film festival spotlighted the controversial practice. South African-born director Gavin Hood, whose latest movie, "Rendition," coincidentally premiered here, said he used to "look at the US Constitution as something that we wanted very badly (in South Africa)." "So it does resonate very powerfully with me to see what I believe to be an extraordinary document -- created during a time of great reason, that is designed to protect us when we're afraid -- being thrown out when we're afraid." Hayden meanwhile told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York the renditions program in which the CIA secretly moves terrorist suspects to or through foreign countries, allegedly often involving torture was highly targeted, smaller than many thought and key to the "war on terror." "They are hardly the centerpiece of our effort, nor are they nearly as big as some think, but the intelligence they've produced is absolutely irreplaceable," he said. "The individuals that we detain provide us with a bunch of new puzzle pieces," in the hunt for fugitives and the fight to prevent future attacks. "These programs are targeted and they are selective. They were designed only for the most dangerous terrorists and those deemed to have the most valuable information, such as knowledge of planned attack," he added. The same day, a Canadian government probe of Canadian citizen Maher Arar's detention by US authorities in New York in 2002 while in transit from Tunisia to his home in Canada, and his deportation to Syria where he was jailed and tortured for almost one year, wrapped up. A Canadian judicial report in September 2006 cleared Arar of terror ties and blasted federal police for wrongly labeling him an "Islamic extremist." The botched case eventually cost Canada's top policeman his job. Ottawa also apologized to Arar in January and offered him 10 million US dollars in damages to settle a lawsuit. Since then, three more residents of Canada have stepped forward, claiming they too had recently been victims of US renditions. Hood noted that he was "deeply aware" of Arar's case when making his film. "I come from a country where the rules were thrown out," he said, adding, "What drew me to this material was having been in the military for two years and having lost friends in a war that we then regretted, having been detained, having had a friend disappear for three months." "The notion of living in a society where indefinite detention without trial exists is very real to me," he said. The film follows pregnant Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) desperately trying to find out what happened to her Egyptian-born husband Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), who disappeared while returning from a business trip abroad. As the CIA official who had El-Ibrahimi arrested over a suspicious call to his cell phone by a known terrorist, Meryl Streep offers a sharp defense of rendition, saying it could help save thousands of lives. But her green subordinate Jake Gyllenhaal is unsure, getting the only laugh from Toronto audiences in an otherwise somber examination of rendition with the line: "This is my first torture." Bruised, starved and confused, Anwar reveals the plight of victims of the state. "We all walk through life with certain assumptions, believing certain things are true, the assumption that we have a right to privacy and that our lives are our own," said Omar Metwally, who played Anwar. "Anybody who experiences torture, all of these myths that we have about ourselves are stripped away and obliterated." Hayden noted that fewer than 100 people have been detained at CIA facilities since 2002. "The number of renditions is actually a smaller number -- midrange two figures," he added, dismissing a European Parliamentary committee report suggesting that of 1,245 flights operated by the CIA into or out of European airspace between 2001 and 2005, most were rendition flights. But Illinois-born Peter Sarsgaard, who plays a US senator's aide trying to help Isabella and Anwar, opined: "The government has to do things with openness and honesty because we elected them to do our will and if they turned against us ... it's a slippery slope into doom."
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