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2004
coverage | BBC
radio documentary on how Americans are doing this all over the
world | Arar's statement, Nov. 3,
2003
Maher Arar
(1)
Arar says he was tortured
By ALLISON DUNFIELD,
Globe and Mail, Oct. 30, 2003
Maher Arar, the dual Canadian-Syrian
citizen who spent a year in a Syrian jail, reportedly told Foreign
Affairs Minister Bill Graham that he was tortured while in Syrian
custody.
Mr. Arar and his wife had a
private meeting with Mr. Graham on Wednesday, where CBC Newsworld
reported that he provided details of his alleged torture.
But Thursday afternoon, Mr.
Graham refused to confirm or deny any element of what he discussed
with Mr. Arar.
"My undertaking to him
was that I would keep the results of that meeting confidential
to allow him to go public with his situation when he deems it
appropriate.
"I don't know exactly
when that will be, I understand it will be shortly. I am respecting
that engagement."
Wednesday's meeting was the
first time that Mr. Arar has spoken to the federal government
about his alleged torture, but allegations that he was tortured
have swirled since his release earlier this month.
Mr. Arar was returning to Canada
from Tunisia in September, 2003 when he was detained at Kennedy
Airport in New York. The United States deported him to Syria,
where he spent a year in jail before being unexpectedly released.
He was never charged with any crime.
Since his return to Canada,
Mr. Arar has said nothing publicly about his treatment.
In his meeting with Mr. Graham,
Mr. Arar also thanked Canadians for helping to aid his release,
Newsworld said.
But he also asked Mr. Graham
to call on the RCMP to help track down the source of leaks that
suggested that while in custody, Mr. Arar gave Syrian officials
information about the al-Qaeda terrorist network in Canada. Reports
last week had quoted federal officials as saying that Mr. Arar,
33, had offered detailed information on people suspected of terrorist
links.
But his family has always maintained
Mr. Arar had nothing to do with the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
Mr. Graham denounced the leaks.He
said Solicitor-General Wayne Easter is committed to a police
inquiry.
"Let's not compromise
that process...and particularly make statements which put a Canadian's
citizen's [life at risk]."
"I totally, absolutely,
utterly condemn all forms of this speculative statement about
someone's life."
But he added that he is confident
his department was not responsible for the leaks.
Mr. Graham did not commit to
a public inquiry into the Arar affair, despite calls from the
opposition, a Canadian civil liberties group and Mr. Arar's family.
He said Mr. Easter is conducting
a police inquiry and should Mr. Arar want further action, he
will ask for it.
"Let Mr. Arar, when he's
had his chance, to come and state what he wants to do and the
government will react to it."
© 2003 Bell Globemedia
Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Ottawa rules out inquiry
into Arar case
By JEFF SALLOT, TU
THANH HA and DANIEL LEBLANC, Globe and Mail, Oct. 7, 2003
Montreal and Ottawa - Maher
Arar, reunited with his wife and children yesterday, thanked
fellow Canadians as he arrived home after being held for more
than a year in a Syrian jail as a suspected terrorist.
Neither Mr. Arar nor Canadian
officials shed any light on the reasons for his detention, or
for his sudden release on the weekend.
In Ottawa, Solicitor-General
Wayne Easter rejected calls for a public investigation that have
come from opposition and Liberal MPs and human-rights groups.
"I will not agree to an
inquiry," he said.
U.S. authorities, who sent
Mr. Arar to Syria after arresting him at John F. Kennedy International
Airport last year, refused to comment on the surprise release.
Riad Saloojee, executive director
of the Canadian section of the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
said the federal government will still have to answer some troubling
questions "before there can be any sense of closure in this
case."
Mr. Arar made only a few brief
comments publicly, confining himself to thanks.
He flew into Montreal's Dorval
Airport from France, meeting his wife and two young children
privately. He hugged the children and his wife, Monia Mazigh.
According to Mr. Saloojee,
a family friend, Ms. Mazigh's first words to her husband were,
"You're safe now."
Exhausted from his time in
a Syrian prison and the long journey home, Mr. Arar thanked Canadians
for their help in reuniting him with his wife and children.
"I'm very glad to get
back home. I'm so excited to see my family again," Mr. Arar,
33, said in a barely audible voice. "My kids grew up in
the past year. . . ."
Clutching his wife's hand under
the table at an impromptu news conference at the airport, he
then said, "I want to thank my fellow Canadians who helped
to get me back."
Wearing a red Maple Leaf pin
on his navy blue sweater, he looked pale and nervous. His wife,
who led a year-long, high-profile effort to have him freed, said
her husband's deportation from the United States and imprisonment
in Syria "has been a terrible tragedy for our family."
Mr. Arar, an Ottawa resident,
was arrested by U.S. officials at the New York airport while
changing planes in September of last year. They deported him
to his native Syria, even though he was travelling on a Canadian
passport.
Syrian intelligence officials
have told Canadian representatives they believe Mr. Arar belongs
to the terrorist group al-Qaeda. The Syrians charged that Mr.
Arar had received military training at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan,
an allegation his wife flatly denied.
Ms. Mazigh, angered by the
suffering her family endured, vowed to find out why U.S. authorities
arrested her husband and sent him to Syria instead of Canada.
"I thank all Canadians
who helped us during this nightmare so that there would be justice
for my husband." Shaking her right index finger, she added,
"This is just a beginning of justice."
The family went off for a few
quiet days together out of the spotlight without saying whether
Mr. Arar had been tortured.
In due course, Ms. Mazigh said,
"we will answer all of the questions of all Canadians. They
must know the truth."
Mr. Saloojee, the executive
director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Canada),
said it was clear Mr. Arar had been mistreated. "He was
clearly devastated physically and emotionally."
Arriving on an Air France flight
from Paris, Mr. Arar met his wife, mother and mother-in-law before
spending a couple of hours with his children and extended family.
Mr. Saloojee and Alex Neve,
the secretary-general of the Canadian section of Amnesty International,
witnessed the family reunion.
"It was pure and unbridled
emotion to see the family reunited. . . . It was an overwhelming
moment," Mr. Neve said.
He said the reports of torture
have to be taken seriously, but Mr. Arar may not be able to speak
publicly about his ordeal until he talks to his family.
Mr. Saloojee said Mr. Arar
spoke mostly about his children, asking how they have been doing,
rather than about his detention.
Mr. Arar's 19-month old son,
Houd, did not know his father, Mr. Neve said. His daughter, Baraa,
6, has drawings she wants to show her father at home.
Mr. Arar was surprised that
he was released, Mr. Neve said, and did not know his case was
a cause célèbre in Canada. People from across the
country expressed outrage at Mr. Arar's deportation. Mr. Saloojee
said Mr. Arar expressed gratitude for Canada's "quiet diplomacy."
The Ottawa man had been scheduled
to stand trial later this month in a Syrian military court but
was unexpectedly released on Sunday.
Mr. Easter, the minister responsible
for the RCMP, is to appear before a parliamentary committee Tuesday
to answer questions about the case.
Mr. Neve said Mr. Arar might
be able to seek compensation from Syria, Canada or the United
States if an inquiry shows he was tortured and if any U.S. or
Canadian officials were complicit in his wrongful deportation.
Mr. Neve said the United States
got off easily. "The fact Canada pressured Syria but not
the United States was a problem for us."
Two other Canadian citizens
are being held in Syria, but the families of Abdullah Almalki
and Arwad Al-Bouchi have not sought assistance from human-rights
groups or the general public.
Mr. Saloojee said that now
that Mr. Arar is safely home, Ottawa can explain what role the
RCMP played in his original detention, what information Canadian
agencies passed along to the Americans and whether that was the
reason the Ottawa man was arrested in New York.
Mr. Easter has said that someone
in the RCMP could have given U.S. officials incriminating information
that caused them to place Mr. Arar's name on a border-point watch
list.
Senior RCMP officials may not
have known about it, he said earlier this year.
Mr. Saloojee said the Arar
case sent a chill through Canada's Arab community, making many
fearful that their own government could not protect them in the
Middle East, a fear that has not abated.
At the U.S. embassy in Ottawa,
officials refused to comment on the Arar case. In Washington,
a spokesman for the U.S. State Department said he was not aware
of Mr. Arar's release.
"I don't know that this
gentleman was released, so I don't have any comment at this point.
I'll have to look into that," spokesman Richard Boucher
said.
Canadian and U.S. government
sources say Mr. Arar was the target of a joint Canada-U.S. security
investigation long before his arrest in New York. One U.S. source
said information from the RCMP resulted in Mr. Arar being placed
on the watch list that is used to screen arriving passengers
at U.S. ports of entry.
The U.S. ambassador to Canada,
Paul Cellucci, told a private gathering in Ottawa this spring
that Canadian law-enforcement agencies didn't want Mr. Arar returned
to this country.
Speaking to the Ottawa branch
of the Harvard Club, Mr. Cellucci said: "Mr. Arar is very
well known to Canadian law enforcement. They understand our handling
of the case. They wouldn't be happy to see him come back to Canada."
© 2003 Bell Globemedia
Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Syria releases jailed
Canadian: Deported by U.S., Ottawa man tastes freedom after year spent in
custody
By JEFF SALLOT and
DREW FAGAN, With a report from Michael Valpy, Oct. 6, 2003
OTTAWA - The Ottawa man who
languished for a year in a Syrian jail after being deported from
the United States as a suspected terrorist will be reunited with
his anxious family today.
Maher Arar, who spent his 33rd
birthday in custody, left Damascus yesterday with a Canadian
official after his unexpected release.
Last night, the family's tiny
Ottawa apartment was a scene of chaos and joy as tearful well-wishers
joined his wife Monia Mazigh and their two young children, who
learned of Mr. Arar's movements yesterday after a phone call
from Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham.
Mr. Graham received a call
from Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Sharaa telling him Mr. Arar
would be released within 24 or 48 hours. There was no explanation
why the Syrians held him for 12 months or for his sudden release.
Mr. Arar, a Canadian of Syrian
birth, was arrested as a suspected terrorist 13 months ago by
U.S. authorities as he passed through JFK International Airport
in New York.
His case became a cause célèbre
among Canadian human-rights groups and Canadian Arabs and Muslims
and for a time strained relations between Ottawa and Washington
because the United States deported him to the Middle East instead
of Canada even though he was travelling on a Canadian passport.
Ms. Mazigh expects her husband
to arrive tonight on a flight from Paris, where he is staying
overnight after his release from prison.
Amid the confusion of ringing
phones and fresh arrivals at the door, the couple's oldest child,
daughter Baraa, 6, showed off a picture she had drawn of herself
with her parents and little brother.
The baby brother, Houd, 19
months, looked wide-eyed with wonder as his grandmother, Najat,
arrived from Montreal. Alex Neve, secretary-general of the Canadian
chapter of Amnesty International, was also among the well-wishers
at their home.
"[Houd] doesn't understand
what's happening," Ms. Mazigh said. But Baraa couldn't contain
her excitement at the prospect of showing her father her schoolwork
and her pictures.
Ms. Mazigh said it was 374
days since she had last spoken with her husband. At that time,
he was in a Brooklyn detention centre awaiting deportation from
the United States.
And the last time she is certain
her husband received any mail or pictures of the children was
in February when a Canadian delegation, including some members
of Parliament, visited him at a government office in Damascus.
Ms. Mazigh said there have
been so many emotional ups and downs that she wasn't sure if
it was some sort of prank when she got a phone call about noon
from Mr. Graham, who telephoned from Rome where he is attending
a conference.
"I was so afraid it was
not true."
She soon realized this really
was the minister and he was telling her that her husband was
at that very hour sitting in the Canadian embassy in Damascus,
having been just released by the Syrians. He would be on the
first flight to Europe.
Haitham al-Maleh, Mr. Arar's
lawyer, was caught by surprise by Mr. Arar's sudden release.
Reached at his home in Damascus last night, Mr. al-Maleh -- who
may be Syria's best-known human-rights activist -- asked when
informed of the news: "Is this a joke?"
He said he had been in court
two days earlier, seeking Mr. Arar's release, and had been turned
down.
Ms. Mazigh said it was only
after she received a second phone call from Mr. Graham's assistant,
Robert Fry, that she could believe Mr. Arar was safely out of
Syria and on board a flight to Paris.
"I knew this was really
serious," she said.
Mr. Fry said Mr. Arar looked
to be in good physical shape. A London-based Syrian human-rights
group reported this summer that Mr. Arar had been tortured.
It was a claim that had to
be taken seriously given Syria's poor human-rights record, Mr.
Neve said.
Ms. Mazigh said she was staying
perched by the telephone, waiting for her husband to call from
Paris. "I lived this nightmare and now it is a dream for
me."
Last night, Ms. Mazigh said
although some questions about his detention will wait until the
family is reunited, her husband's release does not end the matter.
"He was accused of being
a terrorist and all these false things. He needs to clear his
name," she said. There are also a number of still unanswered
questions about the possible role the RCMP played in the case,
she said in an interview.
Mr. Graham emphasized last
night, in the conference call from Rome, that any security concerns
surrounding Mr. Arar would be dealt with in Canada. This, he
said, had been Canada's goal all along, but he refused to elaborate
beyond specifying that Mr. Arar won't be taken into custody once
he returns to Canada.
The circumstances surrounding
Mr. Arar's deportation have always remained unclear. The widespread
belief in the Canadian government is that Mr. Arar may have had
friends or acquaintances who were being investigated by the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service, and that he may have appeared
-- as a result -- on wiretaps or lists of those under surveillance.
He would have been, in the terminology used in security circles,
a person of interest.
Such information is often shared
with U.S. authorities.
"Our impression is that
he's clean," a Canadian official said.
Mr. Graham defended Canada's
strategy of persistent diplomacy last night, pointing out that
it had ultimately paid dividends. The singular message passed
along to the Syrian government and to those governments that
have influence over Damascus, he said, was that Canadians want
to know they'll be treated properly in the Middle East.
In particular, he said, it
is unlikely that anything would have been served by a more public
approach, which he characterized as "more screaming and
yelling."
Canadian Alliance foreign affairs
critic Stockwell Day even got into an argument last week in Ottawa
with Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League. "I don't frankly
think that type of thing is helpful," Mr. Graham said.
The pressure had been steady,
he added, involving Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, and
including efforts to engage the Bush administration in the issue.
"This represented [a serious problem] for Canada-Syrian
relations," Mr. Graham said. "The Syrians realized
they should take steps."
© 2003 Bell Globemedia
Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
'Canadians are losing
their freedom'
Wife
of Ottawa man deported by U.S. to Syria tells public the nightmare
she's experiencing should worry everyone
Lee Greenberg, The Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 15, 2002
The wife of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born
Canadian accused of having links to
al-Qaeda and deported from
the U.S. to Syria in early October, wants Canadians to realize
her "personal nightmare" is theirs as well.
"By keeping Maher in Syria,"
said Monia Mazigh, "Canadians are losing a little bit of
their freedom and democracy ... by putting him in a place and
putting their trust in another legal system than ours."
About 40 people -- including
former NDP leader Alexa McDonough -- joined Mrs. Mazigh in a
candlelight vigil on Parliament Hill yesterday as she urged the
Canadian government to work harder to bring her husband home.
It was Mrs. Mazigh's 76th day
without her husband.
Mr. Arar, 32, a self-employed
Ottawa telecommunications engineer, was detained by U.S. officials
at New York City's Kennedy Airport on Sept. 26 while travelling
back to Canada from Tunisia, where he was vacationing with his
family.
The U.S. accused him of belonging
to a foreign terrorist organization and deported him to Syria,
a country he hadn't set foot in since immigrating to Canada at
age 17 in 1988.
After a mysterious two-week
period, during which no one in the Canadian, American or Syrian
governments could say where Mr. Arar was, Syrian authorities
told the Canadian ambassador in Damascus he had arrived there
Oct. 21. They said he arrived from Jordan.
He is now imprisoned in an
unknown location by Syrian authorities while they investigate
possible terrorism links.
"I want the Canadian government
to bring my husband home," said Mrs. Mazigh, holding the
couple's 10-month-old son, Hood, as she held a candle aloft.
"I want more than words. I want my husband back."
Supporters braved -15C temperatures
to show their solidarity with a woman who says she is "living
a nightmare."
Ms. McDonough said Mr. Arar's
case gave all Canadians cause to worry. "We're living in
dangerous times," said Ms. McDonough. "Maher Arar was
detained, imprisoned, interrogated, and deported without the
benefit of legal counsel, without consular access, without any
explanation to his family. With no explanation to government.
This should be a concern to every Canadian."
Yesterday, Foreign Affairs
Department spokesman Reynald Doiron said an American immigration
document dated Oct. 7 linked Mr. Arar "to a foreign terrorist
organization identified as al-Qaeda."
Neither the U.S. nor Canadian
government has disclosed any proof of those alleged links.
Mrs. Mazigh, whose two children
were born in Canada, said she wants more than veiled accusations
against her husband. "They're hiding behind clichés,"
she said. "We're not showing you proof for 'security reasons?'
What security reasons?
"Show us this proof that
you have," she said. "Put him on trial. That's fair
enough. I'm not asking for anything more."
Yesterday, Theresa Cavanagh,
45, said she had come to Parliament Hill "to let the government
know that this has not gone unnoticed."
"There's a lot of tension
in the air these days," she said. "But that doesn't
permit the suspension of people's rights."
Judy Randall, 59, said she
identified with Mrs. Mazigh as a wife and a mother.
"She has two young children
who don't know where their father is," she said during the
vigil on the Hill. "I think it's an outrage that the Canadian
government hasn't done more to help this Canadian citizen."
Mr. Arar was travelling on
a Canadian passport when he was detained in New York. Yesterday,
Mr. Doiron said that because Mr. Arar is a dual national, his
detention in Syria is a matter for its government and not ours.
"I'm not trying to defend
the Syrian position on this," said Mr. Doiron. "Suffice
it to say that they are not obliged under the Vienna Convention
on consular relations to keep us apprised of his situation."
Amnesty International said
yesterday the Syrian government does not allow its nationals
to renounce their citizenship.
Mr. Doiron said consular officials
in Damascus have been allowed four visits with Mr. Arar. Each
time, he has arrived from an undisclosed location in the back
of a van. The meetings have occurred under the watchful eyes
of Syrian guards, who do not allow certain topics of conversation.
A fifth meeting is scheduled for this week.
The only communication between
Mrs. Mazigh and her husband in the last 76 days has come in the
form of brief, scribbled notes passed through consular officials.
Canadian deported
from U.S. reaches Syria
Canadian Press, Monday, October 21
Ottawa - After days of mystery
surrounding the whereabouts of a Canadian citizen deported by
the United States to his native Syria, he has turned up in the
Middle Eastern country.
The Foreign Affairs Department
said Monday that it had just been informed by the Syrian government
that Maher Arar, an engineer, had arrived from neighbouring Jordan.
Spokeswoman Isabelle Savard
said Canadian embassy officials were trying to meet with Mr.
Arar, who works as a consultant in Ottawa.
She said she didn't know if
he was under arrest and she had no details of when he left the
U.S. or how he was sent to the Mideast.
Details of Mr. Arar's case
are sketchy. He was arrested last month at New York's Kennedy
Airport where he was in transit to Canada from Tunisia. He was
deported sometime this month on accusations he had links to the
al-Qaeda terrorist network.
Foreign Affairs Minister Bill
Graham has condemned the United States for deporting a Canadian.
Canadian officials have said
Mr. Arar was deported without benefit of a lawyer. The lawyer
chosen by Mr. Arar on the advice of Canadian consular representatives
didn't show up for the dual Syrian-Canadian citizen's immigration
hearing Oct. 7 in New York, an official said last week.
Feds protest U.S. deportation
of Cdn to Syria
Canadian Press, Dec. 18,
2002
MONTREAL - The federal government
has registered a protest with the United States for its decision
to deport to Syria an Ottawa engineer accused of having links
to al-Qaeda, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham said Wednesday.
And the department is doing
all it can to try to find Maher Arar, a 32-year-old Canadian
citizen arrested during a stopover at New York's Kennedy airport
on Sept. 26 as he was travelling to Montreal from Tunisia.
Arar, a telecommunications
engineer, has dual Canadian-Syrian citizenship.
But Graham said he was informed
by U.S. officials that Arar was deported to Syria instead of
Canada. He met with U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci on Tuesday
to discuss the matter.
"I have registered our
protest to the United States,'' Graham said after a speech to
a conference on global governance and civil society.
"Our position is a person
travelling on a Canadian passport ... has a right to be treated
as a Canadian citizen and we have, in international law, a right
to have consular access to that person.''
Amal Oummih, an immigration
lawyer in New York who tried to help Arar while he was detained,
said earlier this week that a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service document she examined indicated Arar was being detained
"for allegedly being a member of a terrorist organization,
to wit al-Qaeda.''
However, it was not clear whether
Arar has been charged with any offence.
Graham said Arar's case is
one of many in which Canadians who hold a second passport don't
have their Canadian passports recognized. He added that U.S.
officials told him they felt they had every right to send Arar
to Syria because he has citizenship there.
But Arar's supporters in Canada
have said he could face severe punishment in Syria because he
avoided compulsory military service before leaving the country
for Canada as a teenager.
Arar was in Tunisia visiting
his wife's family with the couple's two children.
Arar's wife, Monica, has called
the whole incident "insane'' and denied her husband has
any ties to terrorism.
Normally, a U.S. immigration
court would deport a foreign citizen back to his last point of
departure - in this case Zurich - but Mr. Arar was ordered sent
to Syria.
Mr. Arar's family in Montreal
was expecting him to return Sept. 26 following his trip to Tunisia.
Mr. Arar's supporters in Canada
have said he could face severe punishment in Syria because he
avoided compulsory military service before leaving the country
for Canada as a teenager.
New U.S. laws permit officials
to detain Canadian citizens born in Syria and several other Middle
Eastern countries, forcing them to provide fingerprints, be photographed
and fill out a form detailing their travel plans.
Canada says the law is discriminatory.
Mr. Arar, who came to Canada
in 1987 and was naturalized in 1991, made one call to his family
on Oct. 3. The family contacted Canadian authorities and Amal
Oummih, an immigration lawyer in New York.
Ms. Oummih has said Mr. Arar
was confused, scared and emotional when she met him Oct. 5.
She said Mr. Arar told her
he was interrogated for several hours by U.S. immigration officials
and FBI investigators, and refused to sign an agreement to be
deported to Syria.
Tragedy of Arar
MAHER ARAR, a Canadian citizen,
has disappeared.
On Oct. 10, 2002, the 32-year-old
Montreal communications engineer was made to disappear by the
United States Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Claiming he was a suspected
terrorist, on grounds it still refuses to make public, the INS
deported Mr. Arar from New York, where he had come on Sept. 26
to make a connecting flight home from Zurich. He was deported
not to Canada, but to his native Syria.
His family has not heard from
him since.
Mr. Arar is a Canadian citizen
who left Syria at age 17 and who was travelling on a Canadian
passport when arrested by the INS.
He has had no difficulty in
the past working in the U.S. for a leading scientific software
firm and is still listed on the firm's Web site publication as
a contributor and technical reviewer.
His U.S. lawyer, who was not
notified in time to be present at his deportation, says Mr. Arar
was terrified the INS wanted to deport him to Syria, where he
feared he would be punished for avoiding military service as
a teenager.
She says he was disoriented,
confused and sobbing when she interviewed him.
Canadian Foreign Minister Bill
Graham has protested Mr. Arar's handling by U.S. authorities.
He says anyone travelling on a Canadian passport has the right
to be treated as a Canadian citizen. He is absolutely right.
The U.S., Mr. Graham told The
Herald's editorial board on Friday, has not explained why Mr.
Arar wasn't deported to Canada.
But he said his focus now is
to enlist Syrian assistance to find Mr. Arar and ensure his safety.
The U.S., he says, did meet
its obligation of providing consular access to Mr. Arar. Under
U.S. law it also had the authority to choose to deport him to
Syria, because he is also a Syrian citizen. But why Washington
would make this choice - an outrageous one - remains a mystery.
Ensuring Mr. Arar's safety
is the first concern. But it is also a grave issue that U.S.
authorities have treated Canadians with utter contempt in this
matter. Washington owes Canada a full explanation of its conduct.
It should also be helping to locate the Canadian it caused to
vanish.
Is the U.S. refusal to provide
an explanation a matter of protecting intelligence? Or is it
a bureaucratic coverup of bungling by INS officials who sent
an innocent man to Syria?
We have no way of knowing.
We are supposed to have blind trust that American authorities
have acted fairly and reasonably.
Yet the few facts we do know
hardly support that assumption. They suggest, instead, that INS
officials acted capriciously, without regard for rudimentary
due process, and, indeed, absurdly even from a national security
standpoint.
Mr. Arar's lawyer says he was
interrogated at his deportation proceeding without legal representation.
What sort of fairness was that?
If U.S. authorities considered
Mr. Arar a terrorist, why send him to Syria, which Washington
has designated a terrorist-sponsoring state?
Wouldn't this amount to putting
him into circulation? Wouldn't Washington be the first to object
if another country acted so foolishly?
Why would Canada, Mr. Arar's
country of residence as well as citizenship, be considered less
appropriate than Syria as a deportation destination? This makes
a mockery of Canada-U.S. initiatives over the past year to work
more closely on immigration, security and border issues.
The INS should read some fine
words Jean Chretien and George Bush included in their Sept. 9
statement on border co-operation: "We are neighbours bound
together by common values: freedom, democracy, the rule of law,
the inherent dignity and rights of every human being." You
wouldn't guess that from the Arar case.
The U.S. would never accept
such treatment of one of its citizens without any explanation
beyond "trust us, he's a bad guy." It shouldn't expect
its friend and neighbour to do so, either.
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell