Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who the US detained in 2002 and sent to Syria to be imprisoned and tortured for a year—without ever being charged with a crime.

In an article for the New York Review of Books, David Cole, one of Arar’s lawyers, outlines the unconscionable treatment of Arar and the very different responses of the Canadian and US governments when it came to light:

Canada responded to Arar’s case as a nation who has wronged a human being should. It established a blue-ribbon commission to investigate his case, which wrote a 1,100-page report fully exonerating Arar, and faulting Canadian officials for erroneously telling US officials that Arar was the target of an investigation into possible al-Qaeda links. In fact, Arar was merely listed as one of many persons “of interest” to the investigation, because he was thought to know one of the individuals who was targeted. The commission found, however, that Canadian officials did not know that the United States was planning to send Arar to Syria. That decision was made by US officials with the Syrians and not shared with the Canadians.

Canada, in other words, played a relatively small part in Arar’s injuries, as compared to the United States. Yet Canada’s Parliament issued a unanimous apology, and the government paid Arar $10 million (Canadian) for its role in the wrong done to him.

Here in the United States, the response could not have been more different. US officials have never apologized to Arar. They persist in leaving him on a “no-fly” list, despite the fact that Canada has cleared him of any suspicion, much less wrongdoing. And when we filed suit in 2004 to seek damages from the US officials directly responsible for the decision to send Arar to his torturers, lawyers for the Bush administration argued that even assuming that federal officials had intentionally delivered Arar to Syria to be tortured, and blocked him from seeking court protection while he was in their custody, they could not be held liable for his injuries on the grounds that the case implicated secret communications and national security concerns not appropriate for court resolution.

Because the Supreme Court won’t hear Arar’s case, he doesn’t have any more hope of recourse from the courts. As Cole points out, the duty to make amends to Arar lie in the hands of the President and Congress. And, perhaps more importantly, it is their responsibility to make sure what happened to Arar never happens again.