Terrorism Documents of International and Local Control: Volume 85 Issued January 2008

Terrorism: Documents of International and Local Control is a hardbound series that provides primary-source documents on the worldwide counter-terrorism effort. Chief among the documents collected are transcripts of Congressional testimony, reports by such federal government bodies as the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office, and case law covering issues related to terrorism. Most volumes carry a single theme, and inside each volume the documents appear within topic-based categories. The series also includes a subject index and other indexes that guide the user through this complex area of the law.

Volume 85 coverage focuses on the U.S. government's surveillance, interrogation, and detention of suspected terrorists. Highlights of this volume involve the U.S. government's increasingly common practice of seeking intelligence through torture (or the threat thereof).

Maher Arar is a Canadian engineer arrested by U.S. officials as he passed through a New York airport en route from Europe to Montreal. Those officials arranged for Arar to be placed ultimately in the hands of Syrian officials who tortured him despite the complete lack of evidence against him. Volume 85 includes Arar's own account of his travels, as presented to Congress in October 2007.

This volume also includes the two Higazy case opinions which center on an Egyptian student at a U.S. college. This student was wrongfully detained by U.S. officials in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. An FBI official threatened to have his family in Egypt tortured by authoritities there if he did not confess to aiding the attacks. After new evidence revealed Higazy's innocence, he sued the officials involved and lost, but won on appeal. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals included an account of the FBI's threats in its October 2007 opinion and posted the opinion to its public website but then removed that version the next day and posted a redacted version with those embarassing paragraphs removed. Volume 85 features both opinions for comparison purposes. Although several blogs have also posted the original opinion, Volume 85 provides what may be the only print version avaliable to the general public.