RCMP Watch

Kerry Pither (Ottawa Citizen) - It’s no wonder CSIS, the RCMP and the government wanted to keep the Iacobucci inquiry so secret. Despite all the faults with the process, the inquiry’s report offers up a startling and shameful record of Canadian complicity in torture. It effectively clears the names of men that the government has [...]

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Andrew Duffy (Ottawa Citizen) - A federal inquiry has found that Canadian officials bear some responsibility for the torture suffered by three Canadian citizens who were imprisoned in Syria and Egypt in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
In a 544-page report made public yesterday, retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci said the Royal [...]

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(Ottawa Citizen) - The RCMP has closed its criminal investigation into leaks of the Maher Arar file without laying any charges, according to media reports.
The criminal probe, which was dubbed Operation Soya, began five years ago, after documents were leaked to former Citizen reporter Juliet O’Neill, now with Canwest News Service.
The dossier outlined the RCMP [...]

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(CBC) Former RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli says the U.S. government, not Canada’s national police force, is to blame for Maher Arar’s deportation to Syria.
In an exclusive interview with CBC News, Zaccardelli suggests U.S. authorities deliberately misled the Mounties about what they intended to do with the Syrian-born Canadian citizen who in 2002 was arrested by [...]

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Christine Kearney, New York (Reuters) - A Canadian who says he was whisked off a plane in New York and sent illegally to Syria where he was tortured for a year lost his case against the U.S. government on Monday on a technicality.
Maher Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer, sued U.S. government officials in 2004 over his [...]

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Omar El Akkad, Ottawa (Globe and Mail) - Months before Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned as RCMP commissioner in the wake of the force’s involvement in the Maher Arar case, the RCMP was closely monitoring calls in the media for the commissioner to quit.
Mr. Zaccardelli’s resignation from the force on Dec. 6, 2006, has been closely linked [...]

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Washington, DC (Associated Press) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged on Wednesday that the United States mishandled the case of a Canadian engineer seized by U.S. officials and taken to Syria, where he and the Canadian government say he was tortured.
Rice, speaking at a congressional hearing, said the Bush administration has told Canada “that [...]

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Editorial (Baylor University) - It’s amazing how our government lacks a grasp of basic playground etiquette. Hitting doesn’t help. You share the sandbox. You apologize for mistakes.
When members of Congress apologized Thursday to Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was seized by U.S. officials and taken to prison in Syria, they voiced their hope that the [...]

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Devlin Barrett (Associated Press) - Members of Congress apologized Thursday to a Canadian engineer seized by U.S. officials and taken to Syria, where he says he was tortured.
Maher Arar said he was ensnared in an “immoral” terrorism-fighting program known as extraordinary rendition.
The 37-year-old appeared before a joint hearing of House subcommittees by video from Ottawa, [...]

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Tonda Maccharles (Toronto Star) - Minister Stephen Harper has rejected a request by three Muslim Canadian men for access to the closed-door inquiry into how they came to be interrogated and tortured in the Middle East.
Harper responded within an hour after Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin and their lawyers all pleaded at [...]

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