Reuters
The scandal of how the Royal Canadian Mounted Police botched the case of a man deported to Syria by U.S. agents shows that the national force needs to be subject to stricter controls, an official inquiry said on Tuesday.
Software engineer Maher Arar was arrested in New York in 2002 after Canadian police falsely told U.S. border agents that he was a suspected Islamic extremist. Arar, detained on his way back home to Canada, was quickly sent to Damascus.
Last week RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned after admitting he had misled legislators over the matter. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, says he was repeatedly tortured before being released in 2003.
Judge Dennis O’Connor, who led the inquiry, called for the creation of an independent review body with sweeping powers to investigate the Mounties. In September he issued an initial report that accused the police of dishonesty and incompetence.
“The case for giving an independent review body the mandate to conduct self-initiated reviews of the RCMP’s national security activities is now overwhelming,” O’Connor wrote in the report released on Tuesday.
Arar was first identified as a suspect by a special Canadian police group set up in the wake of the 9/11 suicide attacks in the United States.
O’Connor’s first report found the group had little national security experience and had broken internal rules by handing over all its data on the investigation to U.S. authorities.
“The protection of national security, including the protection of Canadians from terrorist threats, has become a critical responsibility of our government,” O’Connor wrote.
“Effective review of national security actors assists in the difficult balancing act of protecting the security of our country while ensuring that our fundamental rights are respected and that confidence in our valued institutions is maintained.”
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