A United States district court judge has dismissed the first legal test of the Bush administration’s practice of “extraordinary rendition”- shipping a terrorism suspect to a country where interrogation can be accompanied by torture. The case is worth watching as it works its way through an appeal process that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lawyers for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights brought the case on behalf of Maher Arar, a Syrian born Canadian wireless technology consultant. U.S. immigration officials detained him on Sept. 26, 2002, at New York’s JFK Airport, when he stopped between planes on his return from a vacation visit to Tunisia. They accused him of membership in al-Qaida.

Mr. Arar was held virtually incommunicado in New York, often in chains and shackles. He says officials denied his repeated requests for a lawyer. They questioned him repeatedly about his alleged links with the international terrorist organization, which he denied.

After about two weeks, U.S. officials turned him over to a Jordanian group, which flew him to Syria for interrogation based on materials sent by American officials. He says he was mentally and physically tortured and forced to admit falsely that he had been trained in terrorism in Afghanistan.

After 10 months, Syrian authorities released him, saying that they had found no connection to any criminal or terrorist organization or activity. American officials never charged him with any crime, but they consider him a member of al-Qaida and have barred him permanently from entry into the United States.

Judge David G. Trager’s 88-page ruling seemed to accept the facts of Mr. Arar’s year-long ordeal and agreed that torture is practiced in Syria. And he brushed aside many of the arguments raised by the defendants, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and 16 other current and former officials of the Justice Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

But the judge based his decision mainly on the argument that the case could result in disclosure of U.S. government secrets and could harm relations with Canada, if it showed that Canadian officials took part in sending Mr. Arar to Syria. A Canadian parliamentary inquiry is investigating details of the “rendition.”

Judge Trager wrote that “most, if not all, judges have neither the experience nor the background to adequately and competently define and adjudge the rights of an individual vis-a-vis the needs of officials acting to defend the sovereign interests of the United States, especially in circumstances involving countries that do not accept our nation’s values or may be assisting those out to destroy us.”

Perhaps a higher court can decide whether the needs of the “war against terror” override the constitutional guarantees that have been traditionally inviolable.