A fig-leaf for the assault on democratic rights: Ottawa’s “apology” to Maher Arar

A public inquiry into the Arar affair concluded, after questioning dozens of witnesses and reviewing thousands of pages of documents, that “there is nothing to indicate that Mr. Arar committed an offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada.” In labeling Arar a terrorist suspect, Canada’s national intelligence agencies had drawn unsupportable conclusions from scant and sometimes false information, added inquiry head Justice O’Connor.

O’Connor’s report demonstrated that the Canadian government and its national-security agencies were complicit in the illegal deportation, detention, and torture of an innocent man.

It was Canadian officials’ baseless charges of Arar’s terrorist links that resulted in his name being put on a US border watch-list. After US authorities violated international law by refusing to deport Arar to Canada—his country of residence and the place where he wanted to be sent—and rendered him to Syria via a secret flight to Jordan, Ottawa did not lift a finger to free him from the clutches of a regime well-known for its gross abuse of prisoners. To the contrary, the Canadian government approved a request by the security agencies that had been spying on Arar—the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)—to forward a list of questions to his Syrian captors, so that they could be put to Arar during his interrogation-torture sessions. Canadian consular officials, who acted as go-betweens, subsequently claimed that they had no idea that the Syrian regime routinely employs torture. Only after Arar’s detention had provoked a national outcry due to the tireless efforts of his wife to bring his plight to public attention did the Canadian government send a letter to Damascus seeking Arar’s release. The top brass of CSIS and the RCMP opposed the sending of such a letter, however, and refused to co-sign it.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/arar-f06.shtml