|
Public
Inquiry called: Jan. 28, 2004 | RCMP
raid journalist | BBC
Radio documentary | Arar's statement,
Nov. 3, 2003 | Original news coverage
| Juliet O'Neill | Stephen Williams |
Mohamed Harket
Maher Arar
(3)
- RCMP broke rules: Report
Censored
document released at Maher Arar inquiry
Force ill-equipped, lacked `expertise,' internal review says
MICHELLE SHEPHARD, STAFF
REPORTER, Toronto Star, Sep. 25, 2004.
The Royal Canadian Mounted
Police were ill-equipped to deal with terrorism investigations
in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States
and broke policy rules when supplying American investigators
information about Canadian Maher Arar, says a damning report
released by a federal inquiry.
Those accusations and others
involving the improper seizure of evidence, acrimonious relationships
within the federal police force and the lack of involvement of
supervisors in Arar's case, were contained in a censored 76-page
internal review prepared by a senior RCMP officer and released
yesterday at the Arar inquiry.
U.S. authorities detained Arar,
a 34-year-old Syrian-born Canadian, in New York on Sept. 26,
2002, as he was returning home to Ottawa from a visit to Tunisia.
He was deported to Syria.
RCMP Chief Superintendent Brian
Garvie wrote the report's conclusions should be considered in
the context of the "public, political and national security
environment of post 9/11."
"The ability of the RCMP
to deal with the outcome of that terrorist act, and to manage
the expectations as a result of it, was to a large extent limited.
At that time, both at headquarters and in the field, the RCMP
did not have sufficient investigative expertise, nor did they
have the capacity to efficiently and effectively deal with national
security investigations overall," he wrote.
Arar's lawyers say the report
shows that the Ottawa engineer was a "victim of the RCMP's
inexperience."
"As a Canadian citizen
... I ask myself can we feel safe, should we feel safe. What
are the problems in the RCMP and what needs to be done to correct
those problems," said lawyer Lorne Waldman.
RCMP spokesperson Inspector
Tim Cogan said yesterday he did not want to comment on the report
in an effort to not bias the inquiry proceedings, but noted the
document had to be taken in context with all the evidence presented
at the commission of inquiry into the role of Canadian authorities
in the case.
"Post 9/11 was a different
time where we are now. Everything has changed," Cogan said.
"We're in a different world today than we were then ...
a lot of progress has been made after this historically unprecedented
event."
More than $500 million in government
funding was allotted to the RCMP for security investigations
in the wake of 9/11. A portion was used to create four new joint
task forces known as Integrated National Security Enforcement
Teams (INSETs) which include local police officers and immigration
officials.
The Ottawa branch of the RCMP-led
task force (known as the A division) launched the O Canada investigation
that was probing the existence of an Al Qaeda cell in Canada
and focused on another Ottawa engineer, Abdullah Almalki. It's
believed it was Arar's relationship with Almalki and his older
brother, and a former Toronto truck driver named Ahmed Elmaati
that connected him to the investigation.
Garvie's report says members
of the A-O Canada team had "legitimate reasons" to
investigate Arar and notes the U.S. authorities were conducting
their own investigation with respect to Arar.
The report findings include:
The RCMP did not contribute
to the torture or interrogation of Arar in Syria and did not
provide the Syrians with a list of questions.
There was an "acrimonious"
relationship between investigators on the A-O Canada team and
those within the RCMP's Criminal Intelligence Directorate HQ.
As a result, wrote Garvie, attempts by headquarters to "effectively
monitor the investigation and to provide the appropriate co-ordination,
direction or advice was resented."
Correspondence, including a
CD burned from the Project A-O Canada database, given to U.S.
authorities about Arar did not include the proper caveats or
the appropriate supervisor's signatures that are required in
accordance with RCMP policies. Caveats can concern the reliability
of information provided or restrictions from passing that information
to a third party.
Senior managers were not consulted
before information was passed to the United States concerning
Arar.
An apartment lease obtained
from Arar's former landlord in Canada was not obtained with a
search warrant as required by the Criminal Code.
The report finds that INSET
members believed Arar would be deported to Canada and had put
a request to conduct surveillance of him when he returned. Due
to cost, they abandoned a request to interview Arar while he
was in custody in New York.
"This decision was made
because the RCMP airplane was not available, the cost to travel
commercially was prohibitive and (censored) had not approved
the interview request," the report said.
The findings, at least a quarter
of which were blacked out due to concerns of national security,
are in stark contrast to a letter that was made public at the
inquiry this summer, which absolved the RCMP of any wrongdoing.
"I am satisfied that members
of the RCMP acted within the laws of Canada," Assistant
Commissioner Ghyslaine Clément wrote in April.
An inquiry headed by Justice
Dennis O'Connor, which is now hearing evidence behind closed
doors, is expected to conclude how information was shared between
authorities in Canada, the United States and Syria.
Arar was detained during a
stopover flight in New York in September, 2002. He was deported
to Syria, via Jordan, where Arar says Syrian authorities questioned
him on information he believes came from Canada. He was released
last year after being tortured and held for a year.
Arar said in a written statement
yesterday that he was most disturbed by the report's finding
that after eight months in a Syrian jail, the RCMP would not
issue a letter to his lawyer saying he was not a terrorist suspect.
"I could have been out
of that miserable place four months earlier."
Arar also spoke for the first
time yesterday of a person who was in the room when he was questioned
in New York, who refused to identify himself but who spoke with
a distinct French-Canadian accent. "We still have a long
way to go before I really know why this was done to me and who
was involved."
- Arar requests hearing in public
Says Ottawa sending `mixed messages'
Federal
lawyer's comments slammed
MICHELLE SHEPHARD, STAFF
REPORTER, Toronto Star, Sep. 24, 2004
A federal lawyer undermined
the Maher Arar inquiry when she claimed Canadian officials did
not know of plans for Arar's deportation, his lawyers claim.
Justice Department lawyer Barbara
McIsaac said in an interview this week "Canadian officials
did not know of the plans" for the Ottawa resident's deportation
from New York to Syria.
What role Canadian officials
played in Arar's deportation and subsequent detention in Syria
is the main question to be answered by inquiry commissioner,
Justice Dennis O'Connor.
"By making statements
of fact she's usurping the role that's been given to the commissioner.
It's up to the commissioner to decide at the end of the day which
Canadian officials did what and what their conduct was,"
said Lorne Waldman, one of Arar's lawyers.
Arar said in an interview he
feels the government is "sending mixed messages" by
requesting private hearings to deliver their evidence but commenting
on their innocence publicly.
The hearing is currently being
held in a secret location as evidence is given by the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service. Government lawyers argue its public
release would jeopardize national security.
Commission counsel Paul Cavalluzzo
received a letter yesterday from Arar's lawyers requesting that
a public hearing be reconvened next week to discuss the government's
comments to The Star. Cavalluzzo said last night that
the letter is getting "serious consideration and review"
and the commission will respond early next week.
Stephen Bindman, a spokesperson
for the government's legal team, said McIsaac was basing her
comments on documents already made public at the inquiry - including
the government's opening submission, a censored review of the
actions of CSIS agents and a letter discussing the involvement
of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
But Arar's lawyers released
a Department of Foreign Affairs document this week that contained
the case notes made by Canadian consul representative Maureen
Girvan after she met with Arar while he was in U.S. custody in
New York.
The document was obtained under
an Access to Information request by researcher Ken Rubin.
The notes show that Arar told
Girvan of the U.S.'s plan to deport him to Syria.
Bindman said he could not comment
on that document because it has not yet made public at the inquiry.
U.S. authorities at New York's
John F. Kennedy International Airport detained Arar, a 34-year-old
Syrian-born Canadian, on Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning
home to Ottawa from a visit to Tunisia. He was deported to Syria,
via Jordan and held for a year.
.U.S.
refuses role in Ottawa's Arar probe
Says it acted alone in deporting Canadian to Syria
Letter insists
move was in America's `best interests'
MICHELLE SHEPHARD, STAFF
REPORTER, Toronto Star, Sep. 22, 2004
The U.S. government has refused
to participate in a federal inquiry that will question how a
Canadian citizen was deported by American authorities to Syria,
where he was tortured and held for a year.
The United States won't provide
documents, witnesses, or statements from witnesses to the inquiry
probing the case of Maher Arar, states a letter from the U.S.
Department of State.
Echoing comments made earlier
this year by U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci, the letter
also confirms U.S. authorities acted alone when they deported
Arar to Syria, believing his removal was "in the best interest
of the United States."
"Arar's name was placed
on a United States terrorist lookout list based on information
received as part of an ongoing general sharing of information
between the governments of the United States and Canada,"
says the letter, released by the commission yesterday.
"The United States did
not seek the government of Canada's approval or consent prior
to removing Mr. Arar from the United States. This decision was
made by the U.S. government officials based on our own assessment
of the security threat to the United States posed by Mr. Arar."
Arar's lawyer Lorne Waldman
noted yesterday what while the letter says they acted unilaterally,
it doesn't answer whether Canadian officials were aware of the
plans to deport.
"The commissioner is going
to have to look very carefully at all the evidence to see if
there were Canadian officials who were advised of (the deportation),"
Waldman said. "This letter doesn't close that possibility
down and if they were advised, they didn't consent, but did they
acquiesce by not doing anything."
Responding to his comments,
justice department lawyer Barbara McIsaac said no Canadian officials
were aware of the U.S. intention to deport Arar.
Commission counsel Paul Cavalluzzo
said yesterday he was disappointed but not surprised by the U.S.
response, since testimony from American officials could compromise
a lawsuit Arar has filed in the U.S. against the government there.
He also said he's confident
the inquiry will be able to determine the role of Canadian officials
without the help of American witnesses or documents.
The office of the inspector
general with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is conducting
its own internal audit into the Arar case.
Cavalluzzo hopes to review
its findings if the audit is completed before the inquiry delivers
its own findings.
Arar's case is often highlighted
in the United States as an example of a controversial practise
known as rendition, when a citizen is removed to a country with
questionable human rights records.
Former Central Intelligence
Agency director George Tenet reportedly told senators in a briefing
shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, that it might sometimes be better
for suspects to remain in the hands of foreign authorities who
could interrogate them more aggressively.
U.S. authorities at New York's
John F. Kennedy International Airport detained Arar, a 34-year-old
Syrian-born Canadian, on Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning
home to Ottawa from a visit to Tunisia.
He was subsequently deported
to Syria, via Jordan, and held for most of his incarceration
in what he described as a "grave-like" cell.
The federal inquiry is hearing
information behind closed doors this week from the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service.
A ruling is expected early
next year as to how much of that evidence can be made public.
- Ambassador gave Syrian information
to CSIS
Pillarella
`briefed' on Arar: Report
False confession came after torture
MICHELLE SHEPHARD, Toronto
Star, STAFF REPORTER, Sep. 14, 2004
Canada's ambassador to Syria
passed sensitive intelligence obtained from Syrian authorities
to Canada's spy agency, according to a document made public yesterday
at the Maher Arar inquiry.
Franco Pillarella was given
a written report and a "verbal briefing of the results of
the Syrians' investigation of Arar," in November, 2002.
He then passed the information on to the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS), states a report prepared by the Security Intelligence
Review Committee (SIRC), the civilian oversight body for CSIS.
The heavily censored document
was made public at the inquiry probing the 2002 detention and
deportation of Arar. Arar has said that whatever information
he gave Syrian authorities was only to appease them during torture
sessions, including the confession that he had travelled to Afghanistan
in 1993. He maintains that he has never set foot in Afghanistan.
Details of his false confession
were published in the Ottawa Citizen after a reporter was leaked
a confidential report, which then prompted a Royal Canadian Mounted
Police investigation and included a raid on reporter Juliet O'Neill's
home and office.
Yesterday's revelation that
it was the former ambassador who provided CSIS with details from
Syrian intelligence came as a shock to Arar and his lawyers,
who surmised CSIS obtained information from their own agents
or RCMP officers.
"My view of external affairs
had been that they're there to protect Canadians (and) now we
see that in this case the ambassador seems to be meeting with
the intelligence to gather information that the Syrians had extracted
from Mr. Arar, which Mr. Arar states had been extracted under
torture, and bringing that information back to Canada,"
Arar's lawyer, Lorne Waldman, said yesterday.
Commission counsel Paul Cavalluzzo
said last night that Pillarella, who is now Canada's ambassador
in Romania, would be called as an inquiry witness.
The report, marked "top
secret," also states that MPs Sarkis Assadourian and Marlene
Catterall, who travelled to Damascus last year to meet with Arar
while he was in custody, were disappointed they hadn't been briefed
more fully about "serious security dimensions" of Arar's
case before they left.
"Both MPs indicated that
had they been more fully briefed in Ottawa, they would have reconsidered
undertaking their mission to Damascus," read a passage in
the SIRC report that they had obtained from a Department of Foreign
Affairs briefing. At the time of the visit, Syrian authorities
were preparing to put Arar on trial on charges of belonging to
Al Qaeda.
Catterall was shocked by the
Foreign Affairs report.
"That's simply not true,"
she said last night. "There was certainly no thought at
any time that I might not have gone to Damascus on that mission.
I am concerned that something could be in an official report
that simply isn't true."
A spokesperson for the government's
legal team said it would be inappropriate to comment on specifics
of the Arar case during the inquiry.
"The government of Canada
by calling an inquiry has clearly shown a desire to get to the
bottom of the role of Canadian officials in the detention and
deportation of Mr. Arar," Stephen Bindman said. "The
inquiry will be addressing all aspects of this case and witnesses
will be called to testify as part of that process."
Arar, 34, a Syrian-born Ottawa
resident, was detained in New York on Sept. 26, 2002, on a stopover
on his way to Montreal from a family vacation in Tunisia. He
was later deported, via Jordan, to Syria, where he said he was
tortured for almost two weeks and held in a "grave-like"
cell for a year.
One of SIRC's conclusions was
that CSIS had no knowledge that American officials were planning
to deport Arar.
- Arar private
hearings start
Counsel confident of probe's outcome
Civil liberties, security are key
issues
MICHELLE SHEPHARD, STAFF
REPORTER
Despite recent setbacks and
delays, the inquiry into the role Canadian officials played in
the detention and deportation of Maher Arar is still on track
and will have no trouble revealing what exactly happened to the
34-year-old Syrian Canadian.
And the inquiry's findings,
to be eventually delivered by Justice Dennis O'Connor, may alter
the way the Canadian government investigates potential threats
to national security.
That's the confident outlook
from lawyer Paul Cavalluzzo, the commission's counsel, who has
spent the summer poring over more than 20,000 documents, some
hundreds of pages long, submitted to the inquiry by the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
and Foreign Affairs Department, among other governmental agencies.
"It seems to me we are
dealing in this inquiry with the most important legal question
that is facing liberal democracies today and that is how do we
protect national security and at the same time protect our civil
liberties. That balance is the crucial one in this century,"
Cavalluzzo said Friday in an interview from his Toronto office.
Starting today, Cavalluzzo
will join federal government lawyers and O'Connor in a secure,
undisclosed courtroom in Ottawa to begin the debate that will
pit the federal government's requests for the protection of national
security against the need for public accountability.
It won't be the first time
the seasoned Toronto lawyer has demanded answers from the government.
In 2002, again with O'Connor
at the helm, Cavalluzzo was commission counsel at the public
inquiry into the tainted water scandal in Walkerton, where at
its conclusion, the provincial government shouldered part of
the blame for the tragedy.
But this time Cavalluzzo's
responsibility during the public inquiry is even more crucial.
"My role in the in-camera
hearings is somewhat different than it was in Walkerton and the
main reason for that is that the evidence that was given in-camera
will only be tested by me and I feel a heavy responsibility to
ensure any evidence that the government says is confidential
is vigorously and thoroughly tested," Cavalluzzo said. Although
Arar and his counsel had argued to be part of the private hearings,
O'Connor excluded them, later appointing Ron Atkey, former chair
of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which oversees
CSIS, to also participate in the in-camera hearings as the appointed
amicus curiae (friend of the court) to help test the government's
requests for national security confidentiality.
Arar's lawyers, Lorne Waldman
and Marlys Edwardh, have criticized the volume of documents the
government is arguing should be private - blaming that censorship
for the lengthy delays in the hearing - but are satisfied with
Cavalluzzo and Atkey's participation.
"I have complete confidence
at the end of the day enough of the documents will be made public
to have a meaningful understanding of what happened to Mr. Arar,"
Waldman said last week.
That understanding, however,
will come without the input of at least two important witnesses.
Earlier this summer the Syrian
government declined requests to participate in the inquiry.
Ahmed Elmaati, an Egyptian
Canadian who also argues that he was detained in Syria and later
in Egypt at the behest of the Canadian government, and perhaps
provides a crucial link in why authorities investigated Arar,
is also unlikely to testify.
His lawyer called the commission
a "whitewash," after being denied official standing
at the inquiry.
Then there's the participation
of the American government. Arar was detained in 2002 in New
York by U.S. authorities during a stopover flight from Tunisia
to Montreal.
It was U.S. authorities who
ordered Arar deported to Syria, via Jordan, after telling him
he was suspected of being tied to Al Qaeda.
Arar's case has been highlighted
in the U.S. as an example of the government's rendition policies,
where terrorism suspects are surrendered to countries with questionable
human rights records for questioning.
The commission requested the
participation from the American government back in May, but still
has not received a response.
Arar blames
Ottawa as in-laws interrogated
Wife's brother, father targeted by Tunisian police in 3-hour
probe
MICHELLE SHEPHARD, Toronto
Star STAFF REPORTER, Sep. 10, 2004
OTTAWA-Maher Arar and his wife
Monia Mazigh are blaming Canadian officials for the recent interrogation
of their relatives in Tunisia.
Mazigh said yesterday that
on Aug. 3, agents with the Tunisian secret police spent three
hours questioning her brother Mourad, who will be one of the
witnesses called at a public inquiry probing the detention and
deportation of Arar. Escorting him to the country's interior
ministry, they asked him questions about Arar, people he knew
and his business endeavours, Mazigh said at a news conference.
Just last week, the same officials
visited her 75-year-old father to ask about Arar, she told reporters.
"Is this a devised technique
to intimidate a witness called to the inquiry?" Mazigh asked.
The inquiry, before Justice
Dennis O'Connor, is investigating what role, if any, Canadian
officials played in Arar's arrest in New York as a terrorism
suspect and his deportation to Syria in 2002. The Syrian-born
Canadian was detained for almost a year and endured two weeks
of physical torture.
With her husband, lawyer and
Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada
at her side, Mazigh demanded that the government investigate
the new allegations, noting a letter she sent last month to Deputy
Prime Minister Anne McLellan went unanswered.
McLellan, who was in Kelowna,
B.C., yesterday, told the Canadian Press that she will look into
the allegations that Arar's in-laws were investigated at the
behest of Canadian security officials. But she defended the right
of the government to share information with other countries.
"The collection of intelligence,
its analyzing and its sharing either within this country or within
those countries with whom we have agreements, is absolutely key"
to the fight against terrorism, she said.
Arar's lawyers also sent a
letter last week to Barbara McIsaac, counsel for the justice
department at the inquiry. Spokesperson Stephen Bindman said
McIsaac will reply in writing to the letter but denied the accusations
made by Arar and Mazigh yesterday, saying "the intimidation
of witnesses is illegal."
"The government of Canada
would never condone such activity," he said.
The public inquiry, which began
this summer, will resume behind closed doors Monday with government
lawyers arguing against the public release of evidence that could
jeopardize national security.
Over the next few months, in
the absence of Arar or his lawyers and the public, O'Connor will
have to review this evidence, with the help of counsel Paul Cavalluzzo
and Ron Atkey, former head of the Security Intelligence Review
Committee, and ultimately decide what can be released.
That decision, and the resumption
of the public inquiry, may not come until next year.
At the heart of the inquiry
is determining in what capacity the RCMP, Canadian Security Intelligence
Service or officials with the Department of Foreign Affairs or
from other federal departments were involved in Arar's case.
RCMP passed
along Arar's name, U.S. says
By JEFF SALLOT AND
COLIN FREEZE, Globe and Mail, Nov. 8, 2003
The name of Ottawa software
engineer Maher Arar name was entered on a U.S. border watch list
because of intelligence that came originally from Canada, U.S.
sources say.
Mr. Arar, who was deported
from New York last year to Syria, where he was tortured, was
unknown to U.S. law-enforcement agencies until the RCMP passed
his name along as a terrorist suspect, the U.S. sources said
Friday.
"Arar first came to our
attention from information from the Canadian government,"
a U.S. official who has been closely involved in the case said.
RCMP co-operation with the
United States after Mr. Arar's arrest in September, 2002, has
been documented previously. But the U.S. officials' disclosure
yesterday is the first time the Americans have said the Arar
case had its genesis in Canada.
The U.S. sources would not
disclose the nature of the information the Mounties passed along.
But they said it was of sufficient interest to the Federal Bureau
of Investigation and U.S. immigration officials for them to place
the Canadian man's name on a computerized watch list known as
Viper.
Mr. Arar had travelled freely
to the United States many times on business. In fact, he had
a U.S. visa that allowed him to work in Boston for a computer
firm before his name got on the Viper database.
The RCMP would not comment
specifically on the U.S. sources' claim that the Arar case originated
with the force. But RCMP spokesman Paul Marsh said the force
"routinely and lawfully shares information with foreign
law-enforcement agencies."
Mr. Marsh reiterated the RCMP's
position that any decision to deport the Ottawa man was made
solely by the United States.
The Arar case has ignited a
political firestorm in Ottawa: MPs, many of them Liberal backbenchers,
are demanding a public inquiry into the role of Canadian federal
agencies in the 33-year-old man's deportation.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien
has tried to deflect criticism, saying it was a U.S. decision
to send Mr. Arar to Syria, a country known to use torture to
interrogate prisoners.
The U.S. sources acknowledge
that the decision to deport Mr. Arar to Syria instead of to Canada
was indeed made in Washington.
But that is only part of the
story, they insist.
They say information from the
RCMP got the ball rolling. The Mounties continued to work closely
with the Americans even after Mr. Arar was arrested at New York's
Kennedy Airport 14 months ago.
Mr. Arar was sent to Syria
as an al-Qaeda terrorist suspect. He was held in a tiny rat-infested
cell for more than 10 months and tortured.
Now home in Canada, he says
he has never been involved with the terrorist group. He said
this week that he was forced under torture into making a false
confession that he had trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan
in the 1990s.
The U.S. government sources'
claim Friday that Canada first raised suspicion about Mr. Arar
is consistent with earlier statements by U.S. Ambassador Paul
Cellucci. He has said that elements of the Canadian government
were pleased that Mr. Arar had ended up in Syria instead of in
Canada.
Mr. Arar has never been charged
with anything in the United States, Canada or Syria.
The Syrian ambassador in Ottawa,
Ahmad Arnous, said last month that even a after a yearlong investigation,
his government never had enough evidence to link Mr. Arar to
al-Qaeda despite U.S. government claims. "We didn't find
complete [or] concrete evidence of his link."
Mr. Arar said he suspected
Canadian government complicity in his ordeal right from the start.
During his initial questioning in New York, Mr. Arar said, U.S.
authorities had private information about him that could have
come only from Canada. They even produced a copy of his 1997
apartment-rental agreement to show he knew another Canadian man
of Syrian origin, Abdullah Almalki.
Mr. Almalki, who is in Syrian
custody, had witnessed Mr. Arar's signature on the lease.
Solicitor-General Wayne Easter,
the minister responsible for the RCMP, has resisted demands for
a public inquiry. He said the RCMP complaints commission is looking
into the matter.
Mr. Easter has said, however,
that he is open to the idea of a review of the quality of the
intelligence that Canadian agencies share about Canadian citizens
with the Americans and other allies.
This is also a question that
has troubled officials in the Department of Foriegn Affairs.
"The fundamental issue
is the standards that are used here," said Gar Pardy, former
head of consular services at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
"Particularly the standards when information is transferred
between countries. That's the key issue here.
"Nobody is saying that
police shouldn't co-operate with one another, particularly given
the issue of the bloody world out there. But there is a requirement
for standards to be in place," he said.
He argued that that Canadian
agencies must place clear conditions on how other countries use
the information Canada swaps.
"The standards that you
use, with respect to the information that is passed, and the
hold you put on that information in terms of its use by another
country: That's what you have to look for," he said. "If
those two elements are not active in terms of the exchange of
information, then you are going to get cases like Arar.
"You do it all the time.
These are part of the agreements one works out with foreign governments.
And if police are not prepared to place conditions on it, then
we've got a problem.
". . . We don't have a
lot to bring to the table in these areas other than information
about possible Canadian citizens. We're not active internationally
in the way the agency or FBI is.
"All of these issues take
place in the shadows. It's not something that government stand
up and talk about. And there is no question the American agencies
have been given a lot more freedom to act in the nasty areas
of this business after Sept. 11," Mr. Pardy said.
© 2003 Bell Globemedia
Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Handling
of Arar could result in charges: Dershowitz
By OLIVER MOORE ,Globe
and Mail Update, Nov. 5, 2003
Prominent Harvard University
law professor Alan Dershowitz said Wednesday that the United
States broke its own laws by deporting Maher Arar to a country
that practises torture and warned that those responsible could
face criminal sanction or civil suit.
Mr. Arar, who was born in Syria
but emigrated in his teens and took Canadian citizenship, says
that he was arrested at New York's Kennedy airport and deported
to Jordan and then Syria. Although never charged with anything,
he says that Syrian authorities tortured and mistreated him during
a year-long imprisonment.
Abruptly released last month
and flown home, Mr. Arar on Tuesday broke his silence to denounce
his deportation and call for a public inquiry. Prime Minister
Jean Chrétien, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham and
Solicitor-General Wayne Easter were quick to dismiss the need
for a public inquiry, saying that a review procedure at the RCMP
is looking into Mr. Arar's allegations.
Mr. Dershowitz said that Canadians
should be furious about this case and that Ottawa should do whatever
it can to hold to account the people responsible for sending
Mr. Arar into harm's way.
"If that person knew or
should have known that he was sending the person to be tortured,
he's violated treaties, probably violated criminal statues as
well. Clearly there are consequences," he told globeandmail.com
from his Boston office. "So far nobody's produced any evidence
of guilt, but there has been evidence of torture."
Badgered during Question Period
on Wednesday, the government repeatedly brushed aside calls for
an inquiry into the Arar case.
Hours earlier, though, University
of Toronto professor Wesley Wark, a specialist in security and
intelligence issues, said that a full investigation may be crucial
to ensure that the public retains its faith in CSIS and RCMP.
"What is at stake, or
may well be at stake," he said, "is the whole question
of public confidence in the activities of the security-intelligence
community. There's a public interest question here and there's
a public confidence question here which simply I don't think
will go away even if [the government] would like to think it
will."
"If it was proved that
Canada was complicit in sending him to Syria for no good reason,
then there is a question of political and governmental accountability.
Careers should be at stake."
Mr. Dershowitz agreed that
the Canadian government has a responsibility to take an active
role in investigating the case.
"[Mr. Arar] has no standing
to raise objections under treaties. Only governments do. So it's
up to the Canadian government to file a formal protest with the
United States, and I hope they'll do so," he said.
Mr. Wark warned, though, any
public inquiry may ultimately show that Canada cannot to hold
the United States to its legal and treaty obligations. "Does
Canada the clout in the United States to be able to protect its
own people?," he asked rhetorically.
Mr. Dershowitz - who raised
eyebrows when he argued that torture will inevitably be practised
clandestinely during the U.S. war on terror and that it should
instead be regulated and controlled under the rule of law - said
Wednesday that the habit of farming out torture is "widespread."
"This the paradigm case,
where the United States can maintain deniability, but it sends
this guy off to Jordan and Syria, knowing that those are two
of the countries that excel in torture," he said.
"That way we have clean
hands and get the benefit of the information; or, if not, at
least the guy is taken care of. What happened with this guy is
he came back, and he's appropriately complaining."
An unidentified intelligence
source quoted in the Washington Post agreed that the practice
is relatively common. "The temptation is to have these folks
in other hands because they have different standards. Someone
might be able to get information we can't from detainees,"
the source said.
Mr. Wark was reluctant to rush
to judgment but noted that "on the face of it" the
case seems "shocking and quite egregious."
"In a way, it's the worst
face of the domestic war on terrorism. It seems to show how things
can go terribly wrong."
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell