RCMP Watch

The Associated Press

Syrian torturers could find nothing to implicate Canadian Maher Arar in al-Qaida or any other terrorist ties. An official Canadian government report agreed with that finding and recommended that Arar be compensated for his 10 months in a Syrian prison.

Still, Arar remains on the U.S. government terror watch list. Neither has the United States admitted fault for holding Arar incommunicado for a week, then, five days after his first telephone call, putting him on a private jet and flying him to the Syrian prison.

Arar and his American lawyer, Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, were to have been in Washington on Wednesday to receive human rights award from the rights advocates Institute for Policy Studies. Ratner was accepting the award for the center, a longtime campaigner against torture and other abuses.

Ratner came from his New York headquarters. Arar had to participate by telephone from Canada at a discussion of his case and of the U.S. law signed Tuesday by President George W. Bush on treatment and prosecution of detainees. At the evening program for presentation of the awards, he was delivering a videotaped message of thanks in which he was describing his ordeal, which began on Sept. 26, 2002, at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and ended with his arrival in Canada in early October 2003.

He thanked the institute for the award. “It mans that there are still Americans out there who value our struggle for justice,” he said.

“We now know that my story is not a unique one. Over the past two years we have heard from many other people who were, who have been kidnapped, unlawfully detained, tortured and eventually released without being charged with any crime in any country.”

John Cavanagh, the institute’s director, told Arar he had asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to clear Arar’s name and let him come. Gonzales did not reply, Cavanagh said. At the Justice Department, a spokesman said he was unaware of the letter and could not comment.

Gonzales has said Arar was deported to the country where he was born. A representative of the Immigration and Naturalization Service was there when he was put on the plane, Arar said in his videotaped talk, and he said he told her the Syrians would torture him.

“She said something like: ‘The INS is not the body or the agency that signed the Geneva Convention convention against torture.’ For me what that really meant is ‘We will send you to torture, and we don’t care.’”

Cavanagh told Arar over the telephone that he was selected for the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award “partly for your courage in helping to catalyze the global movement against torture and this term of ‘rendition’: deportation for torture.”

Last week, Canadian Justice Dennis O’Connor issued a three-volume report on the Arar case that made 23 recommendations for policy changes and reparations to Arar. “I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada,” O’Connor said.

He said it was almost certain that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had sent erroneous information on Arar to the Americans.

The official U.S. line on Arar, as related Sept. 29 by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, is “the people who made the decisions at the time … determined a couple of things: One, that this individual posed a threat to the United States based on the information that they had; and two, that they were able to assure themselves, they had the reasonable expectation that this individual was not going to be maltreated.

Arar, a software engineer, said despite the Canadian recommendations, nothing has changed for him, as his inability to come to the United States proved.

“I think everyone recognizes that I have lost so far four years of my life. I have not been able to find a job, and they hopefully will be able to reach some sort of fair settlement with the government.”

He took his story to Europe to rally support for opposing such activities by the United States. “In my opinion if other countries do not support, whether intentionally or not intentionally, the United States rendition program, I think it wouldn’t happen,” he said.

“We have to remember those rendition flights passed over Europe, and my hope was that if I tell my story to Europeans, they take serious action and forbid those flights from either passing through their airspace or landing in their airports.”

His flight landed in Rome, he said, but he did not concentrate on which countries the plane overflew. “My main concern on the plane was how to avoid torture once I get into Syria,” he said.

The awards were presented by actress-activist Vanessa Redgrave. It is named for Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean diplomat, and American Ronni Moffitt, both staff members of the Institute for Policy Studies. Sept. 21 was the 30th anniversary of their 1976 deaths in a bombing on a Washington street that was ordered by President Augusto Pinochet’s Chilean government.

WASHINGTON Syrian torturers could find nothing to implicate Canadian Maher Arar in al-Qaida or any other terrorist ties. An official Canadian government report agreed with that finding and recommended that Arar be compensated for his 10 months in a Syrian prison.

Still, Arar remains on the U.S. government terror watch list. Neither has the United States admitted fault for holding Arar incommunicado for a week, then, five days after his first telephone call, putting him on a private jet and flying him to the Syrian prison.

Arar and his American lawyer, Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, were to have been in Washington on Wednesday to receive human rights award from the rights advocates Institute for Policy Studies. Ratner was accepting the award for the center, a longtime campaigner against torture and other abuses.

Ratner came from his New York headquarters. Arar had to participate by telephone from Canada at a discussion of his case and of the U.S. law signed Tuesday by President George W. Bush on treatment and prosecution of detainees. At the evening program for presentation of the awards, he was delivering a videotaped message of thanks in which he was describing his ordeal, which began on Sept. 26, 2002, at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and ended with his arrival in Canada in early October 2003.

He thanked the institute for the award. “It mans that there are still Americans out there who value our struggle for justice,” he said.

“We now know that my story is not a unique one. Over the past two years we have heard from many other people who were, who have been kidnapped, unlawfully detained, tortured and eventually released without being charged with any crime in any country.”

John Cavanagh, the institute’s director, told Arar he had asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to clear Arar’s name and let him come. Gonzales did not reply, Cavanagh said. At the Justice Department, a spokesman said he was unaware of the letter and could not comment.

Gonzales has said Arar was deported to the country where he was born. A representative of the Immigration and Naturalization Service was there when he was put on the plane, Arar said in his videotaped talk, and he said he told her the Syrians would torture him.

“She said something like: ‘The INS is not the body or the agency that signed the Geneva Convention convention against torture.’ For me what that really meant is ‘We will send you to torture, and we don’t care.’”

Cavanagh told Arar over the telephone that he was selected for the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award “partly for your courage in helping to catalyze the global movement against torture and this term of ‘rendition’: deportation for torture.”

Last week, Canadian Justice Dennis O’Connor issued a three-volume report on the Arar case that made 23 recommendations for policy changes and reparations to Arar. “I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada,” O’Connor said.

He said it was almost certain that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had sent erroneous information on Arar to the Americans.

The official U.S. line on Arar, as related Sept. 29 by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, is “the people who made the decisions at the time … determined a couple of things: One, that this individual posed a threat to the United States based on the information that they had; and two, that they were able to assure themselves, they had the reasonable expectation that this individual was not going to be maltreated.

Arar, a software engineer, said despite the Canadian recommendations, nothing has changed for him, as his inability to come to the United States proved.

“I think everyone recognizes that I have lost so far four years of my life. I have not been able to find a job, and they hopefully will be able to reach some sort of fair settlement with the government.”

He took his story to Europe to rally support for opposing such activities by the United States. “In my opinion if other countries do not support, whether intentionally or not intentionally, the United States rendition program, I think it wouldn’t happen,” he said.

“We have to remember those rendition flights passed over Europe, and my hope was that if I tell my story to Europeans, they take serious action and forbid those flights from either passing through their airspace or landing in their airports.”

His flight landed in Rome, he said, but he did not concentrate on which countries the plane overflew. “My main concern on the plane was how to avoid torture once I get into Syria,” he said.

The awards were presented by actress-activist Vanessa Redgrave. It is named for Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean diplomat, and American Ronni Moffitt, both staff members of the Institute for Policy Studies. Sept. 21 was the 30th anniversary of their 1976 deaths in a bombing on a Washington street that was ordered by President Augusto Pinochet’s Chilean government.