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September
19, 2006
Canadians
Fault
U.S.
for Its Role in Torture Case
By IAN
AUSTEN
OTTAWA, Sept. 18 — A government commission on Monday
exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to
terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada
and the United
States for his deportation four years ago to Syria,
where he was imprisoned and tortured.
The
report on the engineer, Maher Arar, said American officials
had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian
investigators and then misled Canadian authorities about their
plans for Mr. Arar before transporting him to
Syria
.
“I
am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to
indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his
activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada,”
Justice Dennis R. O’Connor, head of the commission, said at
a news conference.
The
report’s findings could reverberate heavily through the
leadership of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which handled
the initial intelligence on Mr. Arar that led security
officials in both
Canada
and the
United States
to assume he was a suspected Al
Qaeda terrorist.
The
report’s criticisms and recommendations are aimed primarily
at
Canada
’s own government and activities, rather than the
United States
government, which refused to cooperate in the inquiry.
But
its conclusions about a case that had emerged as one of the
most infamous examples of rendition — the transfer of
terrorism suspects to other nations for interrogation — draw
new attention to the Bush administration’s handling of
detainees. And it comes as the White House and Congress are
contesting legislation that would set standards for the
treatment and interrogation of prisoners.
“The
American authorities who handled Mr. Arar’s case treated Mr.
Arar in a most regrettable fashion,” Justice O’Connor
wrote in a three-volume report, not all of which was made
public. “They removed him to
Syria
against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he
would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with
Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar’s case in a less
than forthcoming manner.”
A
spokesman for the United
States Justice Department, Charles Miller, and a White
House spokesman traveling with President Bush in
New York
said officials had not seen the report and could not comment.
Prime
Minister Stephen Harper said
Canada
planned to act on the report but offered no details.
“Probably in the few weeks to come we’ll be able to give
you more details on that,’’ he told reporters.
The
Syrian-born Mr. Arar was seized on Sept. 26, 2002, after he
landed at
Kennedy
Airport
in
New York
on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia.
On Oct. 8, he was flown to
Jordan
in an American government plane and taken overland to
Syria
, where he says he was held for 10 months in a tiny cell and
beaten repeatedly with a metal cable. He was freed in October
2003, after Syrian officials concluded that he had no
connection to terrorism and returned him to
Canada
.
Mr.
Arar’s case attracted considerable attention in
Canada
, where critics viewed it as an example of the excesses of the
campaign against terror that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.
The practice of rendition has caused an outcry from human
rights organizations as “outsourcing torture,” because
suspects often have been taken to countries where brutal
treatment of prisoners is routine.
The
commission supports that view, describing a Mounted Police
force that was ill-prepared to assume the intelligence duties
assigned to it after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr.
Arar, speaking at a news conference, praised the findings.
“Today Justice O’Connor has cleared my name and restored
my reputation,” he said. “I call on the government of
Canada
to accept the findings of this report and hold these people
responsible.”
His
lawyer, Marlys Edwardh, said the report affirmed that Mr. Arar,
who has been unemployed since his return to
Canada
, was deported and tortured because of “a breathtakingly
incompetent investigation.”
The
commission found that Mr. Arar first came to police attention
on Oct. 12, 2001, when he met with Abdullah Almalki, a man
already under surveillance by a newly established Mounted
Police intelligence unit known as Project A-O Canada. Mr. Arar
has said in interviews that the meeting at Mango’s Cafe in
Ottawa
, and a subsequent 20-minute conversation outside the
restaurant, was mostly about finding inexpensive ink jet
printer cartridges.
The
meeting set off a chain of actions by the police.
Investigators obtained a copy of Mr. Arar’s rental lease.
After finding Mr. Almalki listed as an emergency contact, they
stepped up their investigation of Mr. Arar. At the end of that
month, the police asked customs officials to include Mr. Arar
and his wife on a “terrorist lookout” list, which would
subject them to more intensive question when re-entering
Canada
.
However,
the commission found that the designation should have only
been applied to people who are members or associates of
terrorist networks. Neither the police nor customs had any
such evidence of that concerning Mr. Arar or his wife, an
economist.
From
there, the Mounted Police asked that the couple be included in
a database that alerts
United States
border officers to suspect individuals. The police described
Mr. Arar and his wife as, the report said, “Islamic
extremists suspected of being linked to the al Qaeda
movement.”
The
commission said that all who testified before it accepted that
the description was false.
According
to the inquiry’s finding, the Mounted Police gave the F.B.I.
and other American authorities material from Project A-O
Canada, which included suggestions that Mr. Arar had visited
Washington
around Sept. 11 and had refused to cooperate with the Canadian
police. The handover of the data violated the force’s own
guidelines, but was justified on the basis that such rules no
longer applied after 2001.
In
July 2002, the Mounted Police learned that Mr. Arar and his
family were in
Tunisia
, and incorrectly concluded that they had left
Canada
permanently.
On
Sept. 26, 2002, the F.B.I. called Project A-O and told the
Canadian police that Mr. Arar was scheduled to arrive in about
one hour from
Zurich
. The F.B.I. also said it planned to question Mr. Arar and
then send him back to
Switzerland
. Responding to a fax from the F.B.I., the Mounted Police
provided the American investigators with a list of questions
for Mr. Arar. Like the other information, it included many
false claims about Mr. Arar, the commission found.
The
Canadian police “had no idea of what would eventually
transpire,’’ the commission said. “It did not occur to
them that the American authorities were contemplating sending
Mr. Arar to
Syria
.”
While
the F.B.I. and the Mounted Police kept up their communications
about Mr. Arar,
Canada
’s Department of Foreign Affairs was not told about his
detention for almost three days. Its officials, acting on
calls from worried relatives, had been trying to find him.
Similarly, American officials denied Mr. Arar’s requests to
speak with the Canadian Consulate in
New York
, a violation of international agreements.
Evidence
presented to the commission, said Paul J. J. Cavalluzzo, its
lead counsel, showed that the F.B.I. continued to keep its
Canadian counterparts in the dark even while an American jet
was carrying Mr. Arar to
Jordan
. The panel found that American officials “believed —
quite correctly — that, if informed, the Canadians would
have serious concerns about the plan to remove Mr. Arar to
Syria
.”
Mr.
Arar arrived in
Syria
on Oct. 9, 2002, and was imprisoned there until Oct. 5, 2003.
It took Canadian officials, however, until Oct. 21 to locate
him in
Syria
. The commission concludes that Syrian officials at first
denied knowing Mr. Arar’s whereabouts to hide the fact that
he was being tortured. It says that, among other things, he
was beaten with a shredded electrical cable until he was
disoriented.
American
officials have not discussed the case publicly. But in an
interview last year, a former official said on condition of
anonymity that the decision to send Mr. Arar to
Syria
had been based chiefly on the desire to get more information
about him and the threat he might pose. The official said
Canada
did not intend to hold him if he returned home.
Mr.
Arar said he appealed a recent decision by a federal judge in
New York
dismissing the suit he brought against the
United States
. The report recommends that the Canadian government, which is
also being sued by Mr. Arar, offer him compensation and
possibly a job.
Mr.
Arar recently moved to
Kamloops
,
British Columbia
, where his wife found a teaching position.
Scott
Shane contributed reporting from
Washington
.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/americas/19canada.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=all
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