who you gonna call - the cia??

DCI Counterterrorist Center "Terrorist Buster" Logo - from Princess Sparkle Pony

FROM THE CIA WEBSITE:

Q: How do you define terrorism?

A: The Intelligence Community is guided by the definition of terrorism contained in Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d):

• The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

• The term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country.

• The term “terrorist group” means any group that practices, or has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.

From Today's Democracy Now

A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress have personally apologized to Maher Arar. He is the Canadian citizen who was seized by U.S. officials in 2002 at JFK Airport in New York and secretly flown to Syria as part of the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program. In Syria, Arar was held for almost a year in a grave-like cell and repeatedly tortured. He was released without ever being charged with a crime.

"On October 8th at 3:00 in the morning, I was awakened and told that they had decided to remove me to Syria. By then, it was becoming more and more clear to me that I was being sent to Syria for the purpose of being tortured. There, I was put in a dark underground cell that was more like a grave. It was three feet wide, six feet deep and seven feet high. Life in that cell was hell. I spent ten months and ten days in that grave.

During the early days of my detention, I was interrogated and physically tortured. I was beaten with an electrical cable and threatened with a metal chair, the tire and electric shocks. I was forced to falsely confess that I had been to Afghanistan. When I was not being beaten, I was put in a waiting room so that I could hear the screams of other prisoners. The cries of the women still haunt me the most.

After 374 days of torture and wrongful detention, I was finally released to Canadian embassy officials on October 5, 2003."

>> WATCH HERE