As sometimes happens with Washington Post editorials, they start out good and then go south. Such is the case today with Freedom vs. Torture? , about Canadian Maher Arar's deportation to Syria where he was imprisoned for a year and tortured.

The Post gets this right:

Deporting someone to a vicious police state knowing the fate that awaits him there is morally repugnant. America shouldn't be subcontracting torture.

But then, it veers off course. The Post suggests that it would have been wrong to return Mr. Arar to Canada because that would have meant freedom to Mr. Arar since in the Post's view there was little likelihood of charges being brought there. Instead, the Post opines. we should fix Guantanamo so it isn't a "legal black hole" and then we could breathe a sigh of relief as we declare the Maher Arars of the world "enemy combatants" and ship them off to its confines.

No. Maher Arar was changing planes at JFK, not blowing up a building or loaded down with explosives when he was grabbed by the U.S. If the U.S. had credible evidence Arar was a terrorist threat, it should have arranged for a military transport to return him to Canada and relayed the incriminating information to Canada with a request for Canada to investigate the matter, and if Canada deemed it appropriate, to arrest him. And even that action should not have been deemed acceptable unless he was first taken before a federal judge who approved of it after a hearing at which Arar was provided counsel.

Due process of law applies to everyone in this country--citizens, residents and travelers just passing through.