RCMP Watch

Tonda MacCharles - Toronto Star

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli made a stunning about-face today, saying he and other senior RCMP officials did not know the RCMP conveyed wrong information to American authorities about Maher Arar.

That information, concluded an inquiry judge, “very likely” led to his deportation to torture in Syria.

In a complete contradiction of earlier testimony before a parliamentary committee, Zaccardelli now claims he was unaware throughout Arar’s detention by the U.S., and later Syria, of the RCMP missteps.

“When ministers were briefed about the circumstances of the Arar case, their briefings did not include the fact that some inaccurate information had been provided to the Americans by the RCMP,” Zaccardelli told a business audience.

“This was not recognized by the RCMP at the time, and senior officials including myself were not informed until the commission of inquiry had completed its work.”

The country’s top national law enforcement officer was speaking to the Canadian Club of Ottawa.

Later, he denied any discrepancy in his versions, and said he would “clear up any misinterpretation” of his earlier statements tomorrow.

Zaccardelli has been summoned to reappear before a parliamentary committee to explain his actions, after declarations by former ministers he kept them in the dark.

Today, Zaccardelli was flanked at the head table by former RCMP commissioner Phil Murray, whom he replaced, CSIS head Jim Judd, and Ontario Provincial Police chief Julian Fantino. Fantino acknowledged it was a show of support.

In September, Zaccardelli claimed the Mounties owned up to errors made in informing the United States that Arar was an “Islamic extremist” tied to Al Qaeda and that he personally had informed himself of the details in the case “shortly after” Arar’s jailing in Syria was confirmed to Ottawa in late October 2002.

But three former Liberal solicitors general, who were the political bosses responsible for the RCMP, told the committee they were never informed of that mistaken labelling of Arar.

Unaware of the RCMP’s missteps in the affair, Lawrence MacAulay, Wayne Easter, and Anne McLellan publicly defended the force, which stood accused of participating in the “rendition” of Arar to Syria.

The Ottawa software engineer was completely cleared by an inquiry, which found the RCMP careless misidentification of Arar put him in jeopardy. The U.S. quickly deported Arar, who held dual Canadian and Syrian citizenship, not to his home in Canada, but to Syria, where the innocent man was tortured for more than two weeks, and held for more than a year in a grave-like earthen-walled cell.