Associated Press
The Canadian government announced Tuesday it would launch new investigations into claims that three Muslim Canadians were tortured while being held in a Syrian prison because of faulty information given to Damascus by Canadian authorities.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day made the announcement just hours after a federal commission into another such case recommended that an agency be created to oversee intelligence and counterterrorism activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The national police force has come under intense criticism over its handling of the case of Maher Arar, culminating in the resignation of Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli last week.
The country’s top police officer conceded he got his facts wrong when testifying before a federal inquiry about when he became aware that RCMP officials had provided false information to U.S. authorities that claimed the 35-year-old Arar had ties to al-Qaida.
The Ottawa engineer was detained at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002 during a stopover on his way home to Canada from a vacation in Tunisia. The United States turned Arar over to Syria where he says he was tortured and kept in a dark cell for nearly a year.
After his release, the Syrians did not charge him with any crimes and Arar made detailed allegations about torture that Canadian authorities determined were credible.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has acknowledged that a “tremendous injustice” was done to Arar, but has not apologized, citing the continuing legal proceedings.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police gave U.S. authorities false information about Arar, stating he had ties to Islamic extremists and was a “person of interest.” But once Arar was in the Damascus prison, the Mounties retracted the intelligence, saying they no longer had proof.
A Canadian government commission in September exonerated Arar of any ties to terrorism and concluded that telling U.S. authorities that Arar may have had ties to Islamic extremists likely led to his deportation.
Also Tuesday, Arar’s attorneys in New York filed an appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The U.S. District Court in February dismissed Arar’s lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other U.S. government officials, claiming the government’s deportation of the dual Syrian-Canadian citizen was protected on national security grounds.
Arar, who graduated from the prestigious McGill University in Montreal and also has a master’s degree in telecommunications, is seeking undisclosed damages from the U.S. government.
Arar said Tuesday that he wants the RCMP officials who fed U.S. authorities misleading information about him to be named and brought to justice.
“What happened to me, I sat in prison for a year, not a week or two weeks or a month, it’s a year,” he told a news conference in Ottawa. “It’s not only the fact that they sent false information to the States, it’s what happened during the time that I was in Syria. Why did the RCMP impede efforts by some officials to get me back earlier?”
Arar was the first and best-known case of extraordinary rendition, in which the U.S. transfers foreign terror suspects without court approval to third countries for interrogation.
Arar filed a lawsuit In February against federal agencies and police in Canada, seeking C$37 (US$32) million and a formal apology from the government. That case has yet to go to trial.
Justice Dennis O’Connor has conducted a lengthy review of the Arar case. His first report in September found that Ottawa gave misleading information to the Americans. This second report recommends that a new agency be established to monitor RCMP intelligence activities and calls for stricter review of five other agencies involved in national security.
Day said he would review the recommendations and announced that inquiries had been launched into the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin and Ahmad El Maati. The three Canadian citizens claim they were tortured in Syria after traveling there on personal business and all suspect that the RCMP or intelligence officials collaborated with their captors.
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