Top US court rejects Canadian's torture suit appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court let stand on Monday the dismissal of a lawsuit by a Canadian man against U.S. government officials for sending him to Syria, where he says he was tortured. The court rejected an appeal by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer who was detained by U.S. officials in 2002 at a New York airport while on his way home to Canada. He then was sent to Syria because of suspected links to al-Qaida. Arar says he was imprisoned in Syria for a year and tortured. He filed a lawsuit in 2004 in New York federal court against then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other U.S. officials and seeking unspecified money damages. A U.S. appeals court last year upheld a federal judge's dismissal of the lawsuit on the grounds that Arar did not have legal standing to sue and that Congress has not authorized such lawsuits.