|
December,
2002 coverage | Alan Dershowits
says Canadian government should lay charges against U.S.
| BBC
radio documentary on how Americans are doing this all over the
world | | Juliet O'Neill
| Stephen Williams
| Mohamed Harket
Maher Arar
(2)
2004
coverage
CSIS, RCMP
alerted U.S. about Arar, Powell says
By PAUL KORING, Globe
and Mail, Dec. 20, 2003
Washington - Both the RCMP
and CSIS fingered Maher Arar to U.S. anti-terrorist agencies,
Foreign Minister Bill Graham says he was told by U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell.
Mr. Graham, who asked for and
has now received an accounting of Canadian involvement from Mr.
Powell, also said his U.S. counterpart had confirmed there was
no Canadian involvement in the White House decision to deport
Mr. Arar secretly to Syria, where he was tortured during 10 months
in captivity before being released in October.
Wayne Easter, then Canadian
solicitor-general, admitted last month that Canada was among
the countries that provided information to the United States
on Mr. Arar, but he did not say who provided the intelligence.
The Canadian Security Intelligence
Service had previously said it had nothing to do with the arrest
of Mr. Arar. CSIS director Ward Elcock told the Security Intelligence
Review Committee the service was not involved in the Ottawa man's
arrest or removal to his country of birth on suspicion of terrorism,
a spokeswoman for the committee said.
Mr. Powell telephoned Mr. Graham
on Dec. 2 to provide the account.
Mr. Graham had asked Mr. Powell
in early November to furnish a full accounting of Canadian involvement.
"Both [CSIS and the RCMP]
provided information to the U.S.," Mr. Graham said. But
no Canadians were informed or consulted about the decision to
deport Mr. Arar to Syria.
"They made the decision
to do that entirely on their own," he said, adding that
he has accepted Mr. Powell's assurances that the deportation
decision was made by U.S. officials alone. The two also agreed
to work out a set of protocols to avoid a repeat of the Arar
case, which caused widespread outrage in Canada, Mr. Graham said.
The role, if any, of the RCMP
and CSIS during Mr. Arar's 10 days of interrogation by U.S. anti-terrorist
and immigration agents remains murky.
Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen
who was born in Syria, was arrested at New York 's Kennedy Airport
on Sept. 26, 2002. He was travelling to Canada on a Canadian
passport.
Canadian diplomats at first
were unaware that he had been detained.
An RCMP officer eventually
informed Foreign Affairs officials in Ottawa of Mr. Arar's detention,
Mr. Graham said earlier this week in a telephone interview.
During his detention in New
York, Mr. Arar says, he was confronted with a lease he signed
in 1997 in Ottawa. It was apparently given to U.S. police or
intelligence agencies by their Canadian counterparts.
The five-year-old lease documents
were witnessed by Abdullah Almalki, a man the United States regards
as an al-Qaeda suspect. Mr. Arar says he was friends with Mr.
Almalki's brother and that Mr. Almalki had signed as a witness
on the lease because the brother was busy.
No account has been given of
how, or when, the lease got into the possession of the U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation or of immigration agents who were interrogating
Mr. Arar.
Mr. Graham said officials are
working on a protocol to prevent recurrences.
At least one preliminary meeting
has been held, but hammering out a deal may be difficult. For
instance, although Mr. Arar was entitled to - and received -
consular visits by Canadian diplomats, Canadians held at Guantanamo
Bay fall outside all normal international legal protections.
Nor is it clear that the White
House is willing to give Ottawa any ironclad guarantees that
there will not be similar secret deportations of dual nationals.
Text of the
address by Maher Arar
Globe and Mail, Nov. 4,
2003
I am here today to tell the
people of Canada what has happened to me.
There have been many allegations
made about me in the media, all of them by people who refuse
to be named or come forward. So before I tell you who I am and
what happened to me, I will tell you who I am not.
I am not a terrorist. I am
not a member of Al Qaeda and I do not know any one who belongs
to this group. All I know about Al Qaeda is what I have seen
in the media. I have never been to Afghanistan. I have never
been anywhere near Afghanistan and I do not have any desire to
ever go to Afghanistan.
Now, let me tell you who I
am.
I am a Syrian-born Canadian.
I moved here with my parents when I was seventeen years old.
I went to university and studied hard, and eventually obtained
a Masters degree in telecommunications. I met my wife, Monia
at McGill University. We fell in love and eventually married
in 1994. I knew then that she was special, but I had no idea
how special she would turn out to be.
If it were not for her I believe
I would still be in prison.
We had our first child, a daughter
named Barâa, in February,1997. She is six years old now.
In December, 1997, we moved to Ottawa from Montreal. I took a
job with a high tech firm, called The MathWorks, in Boston in
1999, and my job involved a lot of travel within the US.
Then in 2001 I decided to come
back to Ottawa to start my own consulting company. We had our
second child, Houd, in February, 2002. He is twenty months old
now.
So this is who I am. I am a
father and a husband. I am a telecommunications engineer and
entrepreneur. I have never had trouble with the police, and have
always been a good citizen. So I still cannot believe what has
happened to me, and how my life and career have been destroyed.
In September 2002, I was with
my wife and children, and her family, vacationing in Tunis. I
got an email from the MathWorks saying that they might need me
soon to assess a potential consulting work for one of their customers.
I said goodbye to my wife and family, and headed back home to
prepare for work.
I was using my air-miles to
travel, and the best flight I could get went from Tunis, to Zurich,
to New York, to Montreal. My flight arrived in New York at 2:00
p.m. on September 26th 2002. I had a few hours to wait until
my connecting flight to Montreal.
This is when my nightmare began.
I was pulled aside at immigration and taken to another area.
Two hours later some officials came and told me this was regular
procedure they took my fingerprints and photographs.
Then some police came and searched
my bags and copied my Canadian passport. I was getting worried,
and I asked what was going on, and they would not answer. I asked
to make a phone call, and they would not let me.
Then a team of people came
and told me they wanted to ask me some questions. One man was
from the FBI, and another was from the New York Police Department.
I was scared and did not know what was going on. I told them
I wanted a lawyer. They told me I had no right to a lawyer, because
I was not an American citizen.
They asked me where I worked
and how much money I made. They swore at me, and insulted me.
It was very humiliating. They wanted me to answer every question
quickly. They were consulting a report while they were questioning
me, and the information they had was so private I thought this
must be from Canada.
I told them everything I knew.
They asked me about my travel in the United States. I told them
about my work permits, and my business there.
They asked about information
on my computer and whether I was willing to share it. I welcomed
the idea, but I don't know if they did.
They asked me about different
people, some I know, and most I do not.
They asked me about Abdullah
Almalki, and I told them I worked with his brother at high tech
firms in Ottawa, and that the Almalki family had come from Syria
about the same time as mine. I told them I did not know Abdullah
well, but had seen him a few times and I described the times
I could remember. I told them I had a casual relationship with
him.
They were so rude with me,
yelling at me that I had a selective memory.
Then they pulled out a copy
of my rental lease from 1997. I could not believe they had this.
I was completely shocked. They pointed out that Abdullah had
signed the lease as a witness. I had completely forgotten that
he had signed it for me when we moved to Ottawa in 1997, we needed
someone to witness our lease, and I phoned Abdullah's brother,
and he could not come, so he sent Abdullah.
But they thought I was hiding
this. I told them the truth. I had nothing to hide. I had never
had problems in the United States before, and I could not believe
what was happening to me.
This interrogation continued
until midnight. I was very, very worried, and asked for a lawyer
again and again. They just ignored me. Then they put me in chains,
on my wrists and ankles, and took me in a van to a place where
many people were being held another building by the airport.
They would not tell me what was happening.
At 1 in the morning they put
me in a room with metal benches in it. I could not sleep. I was
very, very scared and disoriented. The next morning they started
questioning me again. They asked me about what I think about
Bin Laden, Palestine, Iraq. They also asked me about the mosques
I pray in, my bank accounts, my email addresses, my relatives,
about everything.
This continued on and off for
eight hours.
Then a man from the INS came
in and told me they wanted me to volunteer to go to Syria. I
said no way. I said I wanted to go home to Canada or sent back
to Switzerland. He said to me "you are a special interest".
They asked me to sign a form.
They would not let me read it, but I just signed it. I was exhausted
and confused and disoriented. I had not slept or eaten since
I was in the plane.
At about 6 in the evening they
brought me some cold McDonalds meal to eat. This was the first
food I had eaten since the last meal I had on the plane.
At about eight o'clock they
put all the shackles and chains back on, and put me in a van,
and drove me to a prison. I later learned this was the Metropolitan
Detention Centre. They would not tell me what was happening,
or where I was going.
They strip searched me. It
was humiliating. They put me in an orange suit, and took me to
a doctor, where they made me sign forms, and gave me a vaccination.
I asked what it was, and they would not tell me. My arm was red
for almost two weeks from that.
They took me to a cell. I had
never seen a prison before in my life, and I was terrified. I
asked again for a phone call, and a lawyer. They just ignored
me. They treated me differently than the other prisoners. They
would not give me a toothbrush or toothpaste, or reading material.
I did get a copy of the Koran about two days later.
After five days, they let me
make a phone call. I called Monia's mother, who was here in Ottawa,
and told her I was scared they might send me to Syria, and asked
her to help find me a lawyer. They would only let me talk for
two minutes.
On the seventh or eighth day
they brought me a document, saying they had decided to deport
me, and I had a choice of where to be deported. I wrote that
I wanted to go to Canada. It asked if I had concerns about going
to Canada. I wrote no, and signed it.
The Canadian consul came on
October 4, and I told her I was scared of being deported to Syria.
She told me that would not happen. She told me that a lawyer
was being arranged. I was very upset, and scared. I could barely
talk.
The next day, a lawyer came.
She told me not to sign any document unless she was present.
We could only talk for 30 minutes. She said she would try to
help me. That was a Saturday.
On Sunday night at about 9:00
p.m., the guards came to my cell and told me my lawyer was there
to see me. I thought it was a strange time, and they took me
into a room with seven or eight people in it. I asked where my
lawyer was. They told me he had refused to come and started questioning
me again. They said they wanted to know why I did not want to
go back to Syria. I told them I would be tortured there. I told
them I had not done my military service; I am a Sunni Muslim;
my mother's cousin had been accused of being a member of the
Muslim Brotherhood and was put in prison for nine years.
They asked me to sign a document
and I refused. I told them they could not send me to Syria I
would be tortured. I asked again for a lawyer.
At three in the morning they
took me back to my cell.
At 3 in the morning on Tuesday,
October 8th, a prison guard woke me up and told me I was leaving.
They took me to another room and stripped and searched me again.
Then they again chained and shackled me. Then two officials took
me inside a room and read me what they said was a decision by
the INS Director.
They told me that based on
classified information that they could not reveal to me, I would
be deported to Syria. I said again that I would be tortured there.
Then they read part of the document where it explained that INS
was not the body that deals with Geneva Convention regarding
torture.
Then they took me outside into
a car and drove me to an airport in New Jersey. Then they put
me on a small private jet. I was the only person on the plane
with them. I was still chained and shackled. We flew first to
Washington. A new team of people got on the plane and the others
left. I overheard them talking on the phone, saying that Syria
was refusing to take me directly, but Jordan would take me.
Then we flew to Portland, to
Rome, and then to Amman, Jordan. All the time I was on the plane
I was thinking how to avoid being tortured. I was very scared.
We landed in Amman at 3 in the morning local time on October
9th.
They took me out of plane and
there were six or seven Jordanian men waiting for us. They blindfolded
and chained me, and put me in a van.
They made me bend my head down
in the back seat. Then, these men started beating me. Every time
I tried to talk they beat me. For the first few minutes it was
very intense.
Thirty minutes later we arrived
at a building where they took off my blindfold and asked routine
questions, before taking me to a cell. It was around 4:30 in
the morning on October 9. Later that day, they took my fingerprints,
and blindfolded me and put me in a van. I asked where I was going,
and they told me I was going back to Montreal.
About forty-five minutes later,
I was put into a different car. These men started beating me
again. They made me keep my head down, and it was very uncomfortable,
but every time I moved, they beat me again. Over an hour later
we arrived at what I think was the border with Syria. I was put
in another car and we drove for another three hours.
I was taken into a building,
where some guards went through my bags and took some chocolates
I bought in Zurich. I asked one of the people where I was and
he told me I was in the Palestine branch of the Syrian military
intelligence. It was now about 6 in the evening on October 9.
Three men came and took me
into a room. I was very, very scared. They put me on a chair,
and one of the men started asking me questions. I later learned
this man was a colonel. He asked me about my brothers, and why
we had left Syria. I answered all the questions.
If I did not answer quickly
enough, he would point to a metal chair in the corner and ask
"Do you want me to use this?" I did not know then what
that chair was for. I learned later it was used to torture people.
I asked him what he wanted
to hear. I was terrified, and I did not want to be tortured.
I would say anything to avoid torture. This lasted for four hours.
There was no violence, only threats this day. At about 1 in the
morning, the guards came to take me to my cell downstairs.
We went into the basement,
and they opened a door, and I looked in. I could not believe
what I saw. I asked how long I would be kept in this place. He
did not answer, but put me in and closed the door. It was like
a grave. It had no light. It was three feet wide. It was six
feet deep.
It was seven feet high. It
had a metal door, with a small opening in the door, which did
not let in light because there was a piece of metal on the outside
for sliding things into the cell.
There was a small opening in
the ceiling, about one foot by two feet with iron bars. Over
that was another ceiling, so only a little light came through
this. There were cats and rats up there, and from time to time
the cats peed through the opening into the cell. There were two
blankets, two dishes and two bottles. One bottle was for water
and the other one was used for urinating during the night. Nothing
else. No light.
I spent ten months, and ten
days inside that grave.
The next day I was taken upstairs
again. The beating started that day and was very intense for
a week, and then less intense for another week. That second and
the third days were the worst. I could hear other prisoners being
tortured, and screaming and screaming. Interrogations are carried
out in different rooms.
One tactic they use is to question
prisoners for two hours, and then put them in a waiting room,
so they can hear the others screaming, and then bring them back
to continue the interrogation.
The cable is a black electrical
cable, about two inches thick. They hit me with it everywhere
on my body. They mostly aimed for my palms, but sometimes missed
and hit my wrists they were sore and red for three weeks. They
also struck me on my hips, and lower back. Interrogators constantly
threatened me with the metal chair, tire and electric shocks.
The tire is used to restrain
prisoners while they torture them with beating on the sole of
their feet. I guess I was lucky, because they put me in the tire,
but only as a threat. I was not beaten while in tire.
They used the cable on the
second and third day, and after that mostly beat me with their
hands, hitting me in the stomach and on the back of my neck,
and slapping me on the face. Where they hit me with the cables,
my skin turned blue for two or three weeks, but there was no
bleeding. At the end of the day they told me tomorrow would be
worse. So I could not sleep.
Then on the third day, the
interrogation lasted about eighteen hours.
They beat me from time to time
and make me wait in the waiting room for one to two hours before
resuming the interrogation. While in the waiting room I heard
a lot of people screaming. They wanted me to say I went to Afghanistan.
This was a surprise to me. They had not asked about this in the
United States.
They kept beating me so I had
to falsely confess and told them I did go to Afghanistan. I was
ready to confess to anything if it would stop the torture. They
wanted me to say I went to a training camp. I was so scared I
urinated on myself twice. The beating was less severe each of
the following days.
At the end of each day, they
would always say, "Tomorrow will be harder for you."
So each night, I could not sleep I did not sleep for the
first four days, and slept no more than two hours a day for about
two months. Most of time I was not taken back to my cell, but
to the waiting room where I could hear all the prisoners being
tortured and screaming.
One time, I heard them banging
a man's head repeatedly on a desk really hard.
Around October 17th, the beatings
subsided. Their next tactic was to take me in a room, blindfolded,
and people would talk about me. I could hear them saying, "He
knows lots of people who are terrorists"; "We will
get their numbers"; "He is a liar"; "He has
been out of the country for long." Then they would say,
"Let's be frank, let's be friends, tell us the truth,"
and come around the desk, and slap me on the face. They played
lots of mind games.
The interrogation and beating
ended three days before I had my first consular visit, on October
23. I was taken from my cell and my beard was shaved. I was taken
to another building, and there was the colonel in the hallway
with some other men and they all seemed very nervous and agitated.
I did not know what was happening
and they would not tell me. They never say what is happening.
You never know what will happen next. I was told not to tell
anything about the beating, then I was taken into a room for
a ten minute meeting with the consul. The colonel was there,
and three other Syrian officials including an interpreter. I
cried a lot at that meeting. I could not say anything about the
torture. I thought if I did, I would not get any more visits,
or I might be beaten again.
After that visit, about a month
after I arrived, they called me up to sign and place my thumb
print on a document about seven pages long. They would not let
me read it, but I had to put my thumb print and signature on
the bottom of each page. It was handwritten.
Another document was about
three pages long, with questions: Who are your friends? How long
have you been out of the country? Last question was empty lines.
They answered the questions with their own handwriting except
for the last one where I was forced to write that I had been
to Afghanistan.
The consular visits were my
lifeline, but I also found them very frustrating. There were
seven consular visits, and one visit from members of parliament.
After the visits I would bang my head and my fist on the wall
in frustration. I needed the visits, but I could not say anything
there.
I got new clothes after the
December 10th consular visit. Until then, I had been wearing
the same clothes since being on the jet from the United States.
On three different occasions
in December I had a very hard time. Memories crowded my mind
and I thought I was going to lose control, and I just screamed
and screamed. I could not breathe well after, and felt very dizzy.
I was not exposed to sunlight
for six months. The only times I left the grave was for interrogation,
and for the visits. Daily life in that place was hell. When I
was detained in New York I weighed about 180 pounds. I think
I lost about 40 pounds while I was at the Palestine Branch.
On August 19 I was taken upstairs
to see the investigator, and I was given a paper and asked to
write what he dictated. If I protested, he kicked me. I was forced
to write that I went to a training camp in Afghanistan. They
made me sign and put my thumbprint on the last page.
The same day I was transferred
to a different place, which I learnt later was the Investigation
Branch. I was placed there in a 12 feet by 20 feet collective
cell. We were about 50 people in that place.
The next day I was taken to
the Sednaya prison. I was very lucky that I was not tortured
when I arrived there. All the other prisoners were tortured when
they arrived.
Sednaya prison was like heaven
for me. I could move around, and talk with other prisoners. I
could buy food to eat and I gained a lot of weight there. I was
only beaten once there.
On around September 19 or 20,
I heard the other prisoners saying that another Canadian had
arrived there. I looked up, and saw a man, but I did not recognize
him. His head was shaved, and he was very, very thin and pale.
He was very weak. When I looked closer, I recognized him. It
was Abdullah Almalki. He told me he had also been at the Palestine
Branch, and that he had also been in a grave like I had been
except he had been in it longer.
He told me he had been severely
tortured with the tire, and the cable.
He was also hanged upside down.
He was tortured much worse than me. He had also been tortured
when he was brought to Sednaya, so that was only two weeks before.
I do not know why they have
Abdullah there. What I can say for sure is that no human deserves
to be treated the way he was, and I hope that Canada does all
they can to help him.
On September 28 I was taken
out and blindfolded and put in what felt like a bus and taken
back to the Palestine Branch. They would not tell me what was
happening, and I was scared I was going back to the grave. Instead,
I was put in one of the waiting rooms where they torture people.
I could hear the prisoners being tortured, and screaming, again.
The same day I was called in
to an office to answer more questions, about what I would say
if I came back to Canada. They did not tell me I would be released.
I was put back in the waiting
room, and I was kept there for one week, listening to all the
prisoners screaming. It was awful.
On Sunday, October 5th I was
taken out and into a car and driven to a court. I was put in
a room with a prosecutor. I asked for a lawyer and he said I
did not need one. I asked what was going on and he read from
my confession. I tried to argue I was beaten and did not go to
Afghanistan, but he did not listen. He did not tell me what I
was charged with, but told me to stamp my fingerprint and sign
on a document he would not let me see. Then he said I would be
released.
Then I was taken back to the
Palestine Branch where I met the head of the Syrian Military
Intelligence and officials from the Canadian embassy. And then
I was released. I want to conclude by thanking all of the people
who worked for my release, especially my wife Monia, and human
rights groups, and all the people who wrote letters, and all
the members of parliament who stood up for justice.
Of course I thank all of the
journalists for covering my story.
The past year has been a nightmare,
and I have spent the past few weeks at home trying to learn how
to live with what happened to me. I know that the only way I
will ever be able to move on in my life and have a future is
if I can find out why this happened to me.
I want to know why this happened
to me. I believe the only way I can ever know why this happened
is to have all the truth come out in a public inquiry.
My priority right now is to
clear my name, get to the bottom of the case and make sure this
does not happen to any other Canadian citizens in the future.
I believe the best way to go about achieving this goal is to
put pressure on the government to call for a public inquiry.
What is at stake here is the
future of our country, the interests of Canadian citizens, and
most importantly Canada's international reputation for being
a leader in human rights where citizens from different ethnic
groups are treated no different than other Canadians.
Thank you for your patience.
© 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive
Inc. All Rights Reserved.aaa
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell