العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
EspañolMAHER ARAR
'Maher Arar' (born 1970 in Syria) is a Canadian software engineer who was subjected to the United States policy of extraordinary rendition, a process where detainees are transferred from one country to another, with the expectation that they may be tortured in the country to which they are rendered.
Arar, a citizen of both Syria and Canada, was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way home to his family in Canada. He was held in solitary confinement in the U.S. for nearly two weeks, interrogated, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer. The Bush administration labelled him a member of Al Qaeda and rendered him, not to Canada, his home and country of citizenship, but to Syrian intelligence authorities, known by the U.S. government to practice torture.[1] While in Syria, he was tortured and detained for almost a year before being released to Canada.
Both the Canadian and Syrian governments have publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism. The United States government, however, refuses to clear Arar’s name and continues to have both him and his family on a watchlist.
His U.S. attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights are currently pursuing his case, ''Arar v. Ashcroft'', which seeks compensatory damages on Arar’s behalf and also a declaration that the actions of the U.S. government were illegal and violated his constitutional, civil, and international human rights.
Maher Arar was born in Syria and moved to Canada with his parents at the age of 17 in 1988 to avoid mandatory military service. In 1991, Arar became a Canadian citizen. Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Factual Background, Volume 1, , , , , 2006, see page 218, note 282
Arar earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from McGill University and a master's degree in telecommunications from the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (a branch of the Université du Québec) in Montreal. While studying at McGill University, Arar met Monia Mazigh. Arar and Mazigh married in 1994. Ms. Mazigh has a Ph.D. in finance from McGill. They have two young children: Barâa and Houd. Maher Arar: statement
In December 1997, Arar moved with his family to Ottawa from Montreal. In 1999, he moved again to Boston to work for The MathWorks Inc., a job that required a considerable amount of travel within the United States.[2] In 2001, Arar returned to Ottawa to start his own consulting company, Simcomms Inc. At the time of his rendition, Arar was employed in Ottawa as a telecommunications engineer.
After he had moved back to Ottawa, Arar had a meeting with Abdullah Almalki on October 12, 2001. Almalki, an Ottawa engineer, was also born in Syria and had moved to Canada in the same year as Arar. They met at the Mango Café, a popular shawarma restaurant in a strip mall and talked about doctors and bought a print cartridge together.[3]
At the time their movements were under close scrutiny by at least three police surveillance teams. The surveillance was prompted by Project A-O Canada, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)-led terrorism investigation team based in Ottawa and a subdivision of Project O Canada which was based in Toronto. Project O Canada was created by the RCMP when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) delegated responsibility for its national security investigation concerning Abdullah Almalki to the RCMP. CSIS had been monitoring Almalki at least since 1998 with respect to his relationship with Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian-born Canadian. CSIS was also concerned with Mr. Almalki's electronic components export business that he operated with his wife. Mr. Almalki, however, was purely a "person of interest" and was not, in fact, the target of the investigation. Nonetheless, Mr. Almalki's meeting with Arar appears to have prompted a wider investigation, with Arar also becoming a "person of interest."
On September 26, 2002, during a stopover in New York City en route from a family vacation in Tunisia to Montreal, Arar was detained by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, who may have been acting upon information supplied by the RCMP. Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Analysis and Recommendations, , , , , 2006, ''See page 30 in "Analysis and Recommendations"''. Despite being a Canadian citizen and carrying a Canadian passport, he was forcibly rendered to Syria. Although Canadian (initially) and American officials characterized his rendition to Syria as a deportation, there is no record that Arar's removal was ordered by a court or senior Department of Homeland Security official. His removal is a prime example of extraordinary rendition, the process by which detainees are transferred from one country to another. Critics have called it "torture by proxy," as many of the countries people are rendered to are renowned for torturing prisoners.
U.S. officials repeatedly questioned Arar about his connection to certain members of Al Qaeda. He repeatedly denied that he had any connections whatsoever to the named individuals. His interrogators also claimed that Arar was an associate of Abdullah Almalki, the Syrian-born Ottawa man whom they suspected of having links to Al Qaeda, and they therefore suspected Arar of being an Al Qaeda member himself. When Arar protested that he only had a casual relationship with Almalki, having once worked with Almalki's brother at an Ottawa high-tech firm, the officials produced a copy of Arar's 1997 rental lease which Almalki had co-signed. The fact that U.S. officials had a Canadian document in their possession was later widely interpreted as evidence of the participation by Canadian authorities in Arar's detention.
Mr. Arar's requests for a lawyer were dismissed on the basis that he was not a U.S. citizen, therefore he did not have the right to receive counsel. Despite his denials, he remained in U.S. custody for two weeks and eventually was put on a small jet which first landed in Washington, D.C. and then in Amman, Jordan. The Canadian government was notified of his rendition on October 10, 2002, and Arar was later discovered to be in the Far'Falastin detention center, near Damascus, Syria.
Once in Amman, Mr. Arar was blindfolded, shackled and put in a van. “They made me bend my head down in the back seat,” Mr. Arar recalled. “Then these men started beating me. Every time I tried to talk, they beat me."
Arar was imprisoned in Syria for more than 10 months and states that during this time he was tortured and forced to sign a false confession which said that he had trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Upon reaching Syria, Mr. Arar was transferred to a prison, where he was beaten for several hours and forced to falsely confess that he had attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. “I was willing to do anything to stop the torture,” he says.
The conditions in which Mr. Arar was held were nearly inhuman. He describes his cell as a three-foot by six-foot “grave” with no light and plenty of rats. During the more than 10 months he was imprisoned, he was beaten regularly with shredded cables. Through the walls of his cell, Mr. Arar could hear the screams of other prisoners who were also being tortured.
Arar was held in solitary confinement in a Syrian prison where he was regularly tortured for almost a year, until his eventual release and return to Canada in October 2003. Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Analysis and Recommendations, , , , , 2006, ''See page 362 in "Analysis and Recommendations"''.
While he had been imprisoned, Arar's wife Monia Mazigh had been conducting an active campaign in Canada to secure his release. Upon his release, Syria concluded that he had no terrorist links.[4]
Arar was released on October 5, 2003, 374 days after his removal to Syria. He returned to Canada, reuniting with his wife and children.
Back in Canada, Arar claimed that he had been tortured in Syria and sought to clear his name, embarking on legal challenges both in Canada and in the United States as well as a public education campaign.
In January 2004, Arar announced that he would be suing then-American Attorney-General John Ashcroft over his treatment. Arar launches lawsuit against U.S. government
The Center for Constitutional Rights brought the suit ''Arar v. Ashcroft'' against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and then-Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, as well as numerous U.S. immigration officials. It charges the defendants violated Mr. Arar's constitutional right to due process; his right to choose a country of removal other than one in which he would be tortured, as guaranteed under the Torture Victims Protection Act; and his rights under international law.
The suit charges that Mr. Arar's Fifth Amendment due process rights were violated when he was confined without access to an attorney or the court system, both domestically before being rendered, and while detained by the Syrian government, whose actions were complicit with the U.S. Additionally, the Attorney General and INS officials who carried out his deportation also likely violated his right to due process by recklessly subjecting him to torture at the hands of a foreign government that they had every reason to believe would carry out abusive interrogation.
Further, Mr. Arar filed a claim under the Torture Victims Protection Act, adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1992, which allows a victim of torture by an individual of a foreign government to bring suit against that actor in U.S. Court. Mr. Arar's claim under the Act against Ashcroft and the INS directors is based upon their complicity in bringing about the torture he suffered. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
In the case, Arar is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and a declaration that the actions of the U.S. government were illegal and violated Mr. Arar's constitutional, civil, and international human rights.
A year after the case was filed, the U.S. government invoked the rarely-used “State Secrets Privilege” in a motion to dismiss the suit. The government claimed that to go forward in an open court would jeopardize the United States' intelligence, foreign policy, and national security interests.
On February 16, 2006, Brooklyn District Court Judge David Trager dismissed Arar's lawsuit against members of the Bush administration,[5] basing his decision on national security grounds, not legal reasons.
CCR attorneys have appealed the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
The rendition of Maher Arar has received much attention and scrutiny in Canada, both in the media and in the government.
Arar's case reached new heights of controversy after Juliet O'Neill wrote an article in the Ottawa Citizen on November 8, 2003, containing information leaked to her from an unknown security source, possibly within the RCMP. The secret documents provided by her source suggested Arar was a trained member of an Al Qaeda terrorist cell. The RCMP later raided O'Neill's house pursuant to search warrants it had obtained to investigate the leak. RCMP raids reporter's offices over Arar case The raid was widely denounced in the media.
On September 25, 2004, the results of an internal RCMP investigation by RCMP Chief Superintendent Brian Garvie were published. Though the version released to the public was censored, the Garvie Report documented several instances of impropriety by the RCMP in the Arar case. Among its revelations were that the RCMP was responsible for giving American authorities sensitive information on Arar with no attached provisos about how this information might be used. Also, Richard Roy, the RCMP liaison officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs, may have known of the plan of removing Arar to Syria but did not contact his supervisors. Additionally, Deputy RCMP Commissioner Garry Loeppky lobbied hard, in the spring of 2003, to convince his government (then led by Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien) not to claim in a letter to Syria, that it "had no evidence Arar was involved in any terrorist activities" because Arar "remained a person of great interest."
In response to the Garvie Report, Arar said that the report was "just the starting point to find out the truth about what happened to me" and that it "exposes the fact that the government was misleading the public when they said Canada had nothing to do with sending me to Syria."
On February 5, 2004, the Canadian government established the "Canadian Commission Of Inquiry Into The Actions of Canadian Officials In Relation to Maher Arar" to investigate and report on the actions of Canadian officials. The United States refused to participate in the inquiry and, until January 2007, refused to share its own evidence with Canadian officials.
On June 14, 2005, Franco Pillarella, Canadian ambassador to Syria at the time of Arar's removal, said that at the time he had no reason to believe Arar had been badly treated, and in general had no reason to conclusively believe that Syria engaged in routine torture. These statements prompted widespread incredulity in the Canadian media, and a former Canadian UN ambassador responded to Pillarella asserting that Syria's human rights abuses were well known and well documented by many sources.
On September 14, 2005, the O'Connor commission concluded public hearings after testimony from 85 witnesses. The U.S. ambassador at the time of the incident, Paul Cellucci, refused to testify.
On October 27, 2005, a fact-finder appointed by the Arar inquiry released a report saying that he believed Arar was tortured in Syria. He said that Arar had recovered well physically but was still suffering from psychological problems caused by his mistreatment.
On September 18, 2006, the Canadian Commission of Inquiry, led by Dennis O’Connor, Associate Chief Justice of Ontario, issued its report. The final report exonerates Arar and categorically states that there is no evidence linking Arar to terrorist activity, stating “there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada.” The Commission also found no evidence that Canadian officials acquiesced in the U.S. decision to detain and remove Mr. Arar to Syria, but that it is very likely that the U.S. relied on inaccurate and unfair information about Mr. Arar that was provided by Canadian officials. The report also confirms that he was tortured while in Syria. Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Analysis and Recommendations, , , , , 2006, Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Factual Background Volume I, , , , , 2006, Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Factual Background Volume II, , , , , 2006,
On August 9, 2007, an addendum to the final report containing previously undisclosed portions was released. The final report was released with certain portions blacked out for reasons of national security by the Canadian government. Under the rules for the Inquiry, the decision to release the remaining portions of the final report were to be decided within the Canadian courts. In July 2007, the Federal Court ruled that portions of the previously removed text could be released. Addendum to Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Volume I, II, and Analysis and Recommendations, , , , , 2006,
On September 28, 2006, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli issued a carefully worded public apology to Arar and his family during the House of Commons committee on public safety and national security:
Arar thanked Commissioner Zaccardelli for his apology but lamented the lack of concrete disciplinary action against those individuals whose actions led to his detention and subsequent torture. Arar thanks RCMP chief for apology Zaccardelli later resigned as RCMP commissioner because of this case.
On January 26, 2007, after months of negotiations between the Canadian government and Arar's Canadian legal counsel, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology to Arar on behalf of the Canadian government and announced that Arar would receive $10.5 million settlement for his ordeal and an additional $1 million for legal costs.[6]
On January 26, 2007, Harper released a copy of a letter sent to Arar, apologizing "for any role Canadian officials may have played in what happened to Mr. Arar, Monia Mazigh and their family in 2002 and 2003."[7]
In Canada, Arar's ordeal has raised numerous questions that have yet to be answered. Canadian authorities have been unable to discover who leaked sensitive government documents to O'Neill. Those who were involved in the case in the RCMP have not been reprimanded by the government for their mistakes. In fact, several have received promotions.[8]
As of December 2006, the only person held accountable in Canada has been RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, who actually resigned over contradictions in his testimony to the House of Commons Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The contradictions were with respect to what he knew at the time and what he told government ministers.[9]
Many commentators and Liberal MPs also dog Harper's government with statements made by its members while they were the official opposition in the House of Commons. Several Conservative party members, including Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, apparently assumed Arar's guilt, labeling him a terrorist.[10][11]
The Bush administration continues to maintain that Arar's rendition to Syria was legal and well within its right. Extraordinary rendition may be legal: documents Canadian Press The government has not publicly acknowledged that Arar was tortured in Syria – the United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stated that he has seen no evidence other than Arar's own account that he was tortured.
On September 19, 2006, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied any wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. in Arar's rendition to Syria. Gonzales defends Arar deportation after Canadian inquiry report
During a press conference Gonzales said: Transcript of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras at Press Conference Announcing Identity Theft Task Force Interim Recommendations
On September 20, 2006, Charles Miller, a DoJ spokesman, said Gonzales had merely been trying to clarify that deportations were no longer the responsibility of the Department of Justice, but were now the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. DOJ retreats from Gonzales disavowal of responsibility for Arar deportation
Despite the inquiry's exoneration of Arar, the United States has also refused to remove Arar from its watchlist. Stockwell Day was invited to look at the evidence in the United States' possession in January 2007. In his opinion, the administration is unjustified in continuing to bar Arar from entering the United States. Reportedly, the United States continues to refuse to remove Arar from their watchlist because of "his personal associations and travel history."[12]
Following Day's efforts to remove Arar from the watchlist, U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins chided Canada for questioning who the United States can and cannot allow into their country.[13] Notwithstanding, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vowed to continue to press the United States on this matter. On January 26, 2007, Mr. Harper rebuked Mr. Wilkins with respect to the Canadian government's efforts to remove him from the U.S. watch list, stating "Canada has every right to go to bat for one of its citizens when the government believes a Canadian is being unfairly treated."[14]
Meanwhile, in the United States, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has theatened to hold extensive hearings into Arar's case. Leahy has lambasted the US's removal of Arar to Syria as absurd and outrageous, noting that instead of sending Arar a "couple of hundred miles to Canada and turned over to the Canadian authorities... he was sent thousands of miles away to Syria." Senator Leahy spoke at length on the matter, calling the case "a black mark" on the United States: "We knew damn well, if he went to Canada, he wouldn't be tortured. He'd be held. He'd be investigated. We also knew damn well, if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured. And it's beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured."[15]
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales noted that the United States had assurances from Syria that Arar would not be tortured. This was dismissed by Leahy, remarking that the United States got "assurances from a country that we also say, now, we can't talk to them because we can't take their word for anything?" The Senator was alluding to the Bush administration's labeling of Syria as a member of the "axis of evil" and its policy of refraining from talking to Iran and Syria. Syria is also on the U.S. State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism.
After Arar's release, the controversy continued over his treatment by the U.S. and over the role that Canadian police and government officials may have played in his removal and interrogation. The United States claimed that the RCMP had provided them with a list of suspicious persons that included Arar. RCMP passed along Arar's name, U.S. says
It was also discovered that Canadian consular officials knew that Arar was in custody in the United States but did not believe that he would be removed. The Canadian government maintains that the decision to remove Arar to Syria was made by American officials alone.
Canadian officials apparently told U.S. officials Arar was no longer a resident of Canada. ''The New York Times'' reported, "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." [16]
At a summit meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, on January 13, 2004, former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and U.S. President George W. Bush reached an agreement, sometimes referred to as the Monterrey Accord, which obliged the United States to notify Canada before deporting a Canadian citizen to a third country. However, according to a news story in the Toronto ''Globe and Mail'', Stephen Yale-Loehr, lawyer and adjunct professor of immigration and asylum law at Cornell University told the Arar inquiry "the Canada-U.S. agreement struck... to prevent a recurrence of the Arar affair is ineffective and legally unenforceable."[17]
In 2007, as part of the investigation into government foreknowledge, it was revealed that CSIS chief Jack Hooper had sent a memo on October 10, 2002 that included the reference "''I think the United States would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him"'', which was the first conclusive evidence that CSIS, and not just the RCMP, knew that a Canadian was going to be tortured at the request of the United States.[18] A year later, Hooper contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to tell them that it was not in Canada's interests to demand that the United States return Maher Arar.[19]
During a telephone conversation on October 6, 2006, Harper notified President Bush that Canada intended to lodge a formal protest over U.S. treatment of Arar. The notification was later followed by a letter of protest sent from Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter MacKay to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.{{cite web|first=Caitlin |last=Price|url=http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/10/canada-makes-formal-protest-of-us-arar.php|title=Canada makes formal protest of US Arar treatment|publisher=The Jurist|date=2006-10-07 Harper told reporters that Canada wants "the United States government [to] come clean with its version of events, to acknowledge... the deficiencies and inappropriate conduct that occurred in this case, particularly vis-à-vis its relationship with the Canadian government." In particular, Canada wants United States assurances, said Harper, that "these kinds of incidents will not be repeated in the future." 'Come clean' on Arar, Harper asks U.S.
Robert H. Tuttle, the US ambassador to Britain told the BBC on December 22, 2005:
This statement was amended the very next day by a U.S. embassy spokeswoman who stated that the embassy
★ Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, ran unsuccessfully as the NDP candidate in the Ottawa South riding in the 2004 federal election.
★ TIME magazine chose Arar as "Canadian Newsmaker of the Year" for 2004.
★ On October 18, 2006, Arar and the Center for Constitutional Rights were honoured with the Institute for Policy Studies Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, in recognition of the struggle to clear his name and draw attention to American abuses of human rights in dealing with terrorist suspects.[21]
★ Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, discusses Arar sympathetically in his bestselling 2005 book ''Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis''.
★ Amy Goodman, host of the radio program ''Democracy Now!'', and her brother David Goodman write about Arar in their 2006 book, ''Static''.
★ In April of 2007, TIME magazine named Arar to the TIME 100, its annual listing of 100 influential people in the world.[22] Arar's entry, at No. 58 in the Heroes & Pioneers category, was written by US Senator Leahy and says his case "stands as a sad example of how we have been too willing to sacrifice our core principles to overarching government power in the name of security, when doing so only undermines the principles we stand for and makes us less safe." The US would not allow him entry to attend Time's recognition event.[23]
★ Bashir Makhtal
★ Arwad al-Boushi
1. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2001 (Syria)
2. The Arar Chronicles: From Success to Suspect (Part 1) Don Butler
3. The Arar Chronicles: Person of Interest (Part 1) Don Butler
4. Outsourcing Torture
5. U.S. ruling dismisses Arar lawsuit Tim Harper
6. Harper announces .5M compensation for Arar
7. Prime Minister Releases Letter of Apology to Maher Arar and his Family and Announces Completion of Mediation Process
8. "Lack of Accountability Unacceptable
9. RCMP's embattled chief quits over Arar testimony
10. Lingering suspicion about Arar troubling
11. Opposition quotes on Arar from November 2002 Canadian Press
12. U.S. refuses to take Arar off watch list
13. Harper's apology 'means the world': Arar
14. U.S. refuses to take Arar off watch list
15. Transcript of Gonzales-Leahy exchange on Arar
16. Canadians Fault U.S. for Its Role in Torture Case
17. Deportation pact useless, inquiry told, , Michael Den, Tandt, The Globe and Mail,
18. CSIS Suspected Arar Could Face Torture: Documents Canadian Press
19. CSIS didn't want Arar returned to Canada
20. US embassy close to admitting Syria rendition flight Ewen MacAskill
21. International Award: Maher Arar and the Center for Constitutional Rights
22. The TIME 100:Maher Arar Patrick Leahy
23. Arar on Time's '100 most influential' list, but he's still not welcome in U.S. Andrew Duffy
★ Maher Arar's official site
★ Video of interview with Maher Arar
★ "Maher Arar: Timeline", ''CBC'', updated September 28, 2006
★ Arar Commission official site
★ Apology Statement Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, September 26, 2007
★ "The Horrors of Extraordinary Rendition", A transcript of Maher Arar's Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award acceptance speech, detailing the events.
★ Legal Filings in Maher Arar's lawsuit against John Ashcroft From the Center for Constitutional Rights
★ Interview with Arar on the Disappeared In America website
★ Falsehoods led to man's torture, report says
★ Transcript and video of Maher Arar's acceptance speech for the Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award.
★ Declassified Report on the Events Relating to Maher Arar
★ Explanation offered for his Detention
★ CBC News early report
★ CBC News report
★ CBC - Maher Arar reported freed
★ Canada starts an investigation
★ BBC - Interview with Robert Baer about the role of the CIA in the Middle East
★ The Arar Report: The US Should Follow Canada's Lead, JURIST, September 27, 2006
★ Kafka in Canada: The Hounding of Maher Arar, Candide's Notebooks, January 26, 2007
Arar, a citizen of both Syria and Canada, was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way home to his family in Canada. He was held in solitary confinement in the U.S. for nearly two weeks, interrogated, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer. The Bush administration labelled him a member of Al Qaeda and rendered him, not to Canada, his home and country of citizenship, but to Syrian intelligence authorities, known by the U.S. government to practice torture.[1] While in Syria, he was tortured and detained for almost a year before being released to Canada.
Both the Canadian and Syrian governments have publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism. The United States government, however, refuses to clear Arar’s name and continues to have both him and his family on a watchlist.
His U.S. attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights are currently pursuing his case, ''Arar v. Ashcroft'', which seeks compensatory damages on Arar’s behalf and also a declaration that the actions of the U.S. government were illegal and violated his constitutional, civil, and international human rights.
Biography
Early life
Maher Arar was born in Syria and moved to Canada with his parents at the age of 17 in 1988 to avoid mandatory military service. In 1991, Arar became a Canadian citizen. Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Factual Background, Volume 1, , , , , 2006, see page 218, note 282
Arar earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from McGill University and a master's degree in telecommunications from the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (a branch of the Université du Québec) in Montreal. While studying at McGill University, Arar met Monia Mazigh. Arar and Mazigh married in 1994. Ms. Mazigh has a Ph.D. in finance from McGill. They have two young children: Barâa and Houd. Maher Arar: statement
In December 1997, Arar moved with his family to Ottawa from Montreal. In 1999, he moved again to Boston to work for The MathWorks Inc., a job that required a considerable amount of travel within the United States.[2] In 2001, Arar returned to Ottawa to start his own consulting company, Simcomms Inc. At the time of his rendition, Arar was employed in Ottawa as a telecommunications engineer.
Project A-O Canada and the events leading up to Arar's rendition
After he had moved back to Ottawa, Arar had a meeting with Abdullah Almalki on October 12, 2001. Almalki, an Ottawa engineer, was also born in Syria and had moved to Canada in the same year as Arar. They met at the Mango Café, a popular shawarma restaurant in a strip mall and talked about doctors and bought a print cartridge together.[3]
At the time their movements were under close scrutiny by at least three police surveillance teams. The surveillance was prompted by Project A-O Canada, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)-led terrorism investigation team based in Ottawa and a subdivision of Project O Canada which was based in Toronto. Project O Canada was created by the RCMP when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) delegated responsibility for its national security investigation concerning Abdullah Almalki to the RCMP. CSIS had been monitoring Almalki at least since 1998 with respect to his relationship with Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian-born Canadian. CSIS was also concerned with Mr. Almalki's electronic components export business that he operated with his wife. Mr. Almalki, however, was purely a "person of interest" and was not, in fact, the target of the investigation. Nonetheless, Mr. Almalki's meeting with Arar appears to have prompted a wider investigation, with Arar also becoming a "person of interest."
Arar's rendition
On September 26, 2002, during a stopover in New York City en route from a family vacation in Tunisia to Montreal, Arar was detained by the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, who may have been acting upon information supplied by the RCMP. Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Analysis and Recommendations, , , , , 2006, ''See page 30 in "Analysis and Recommendations"''. Despite being a Canadian citizen and carrying a Canadian passport, he was forcibly rendered to Syria. Although Canadian (initially) and American officials characterized his rendition to Syria as a deportation, there is no record that Arar's removal was ordered by a court or senior Department of Homeland Security official. His removal is a prime example of extraordinary rendition, the process by which detainees are transferred from one country to another. Critics have called it "torture by proxy," as many of the countries people are rendered to are renowned for torturing prisoners.
U.S. interrogation
U.S. officials repeatedly questioned Arar about his connection to certain members of Al Qaeda. He repeatedly denied that he had any connections whatsoever to the named individuals. His interrogators also claimed that Arar was an associate of Abdullah Almalki, the Syrian-born Ottawa man whom they suspected of having links to Al Qaeda, and they therefore suspected Arar of being an Al Qaeda member himself. When Arar protested that he only had a casual relationship with Almalki, having once worked with Almalki's brother at an Ottawa high-tech firm, the officials produced a copy of Arar's 1997 rental lease which Almalki had co-signed. The fact that U.S. officials had a Canadian document in their possession was later widely interpreted as evidence of the participation by Canadian authorities in Arar's detention.
Mr. Arar's requests for a lawyer were dismissed on the basis that he was not a U.S. citizen, therefore he did not have the right to receive counsel. Despite his denials, he remained in U.S. custody for two weeks and eventually was put on a small jet which first landed in Washington, D.C. and then in Amman, Jordan. The Canadian government was notified of his rendition on October 10, 2002, and Arar was later discovered to be in the Far'Falastin detention center, near Damascus, Syria.
Arar's imprisonment in Syria
Once in Amman, Mr. Arar was blindfolded, shackled and put in a van. “They made me bend my head down in the back seat,” Mr. Arar recalled. “Then these men started beating me. Every time I tried to talk, they beat me."
Arar was imprisoned in Syria for more than 10 months and states that during this time he was tortured and forced to sign a false confession which said that he had trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Upon reaching Syria, Mr. Arar was transferred to a prison, where he was beaten for several hours and forced to falsely confess that he had attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. “I was willing to do anything to stop the torture,” he says.
The conditions in which Mr. Arar was held were nearly inhuman. He describes his cell as a three-foot by six-foot “grave” with no light and plenty of rats. During the more than 10 months he was imprisoned, he was beaten regularly with shredded cables. Through the walls of his cell, Mr. Arar could hear the screams of other prisoners who were also being tortured.
Arar was held in solitary confinement in a Syrian prison where he was regularly tortured for almost a year, until his eventual release and return to Canada in October 2003. Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Analysis and Recommendations, , , , , 2006, ''See page 362 in "Analysis and Recommendations"''.
While he had been imprisoned, Arar's wife Monia Mazigh had been conducting an active campaign in Canada to secure his release. Upon his release, Syria concluded that he had no terrorist links.[4]
Arar's return to Canada
Arar was released on October 5, 2003, 374 days after his removal to Syria. He returned to Canada, reuniting with his wife and children.
Back in Canada, Arar claimed that he had been tortured in Syria and sought to clear his name, embarking on legal challenges both in Canada and in the United States as well as a public education campaign.
United States lawsuit
In January 2004, Arar announced that he would be suing then-American Attorney-General John Ashcroft over his treatment. Arar launches lawsuit against U.S. government
The Center for Constitutional Rights brought the suit ''Arar v. Ashcroft'' against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and then-Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, as well as numerous U.S. immigration officials. It charges the defendants violated Mr. Arar's constitutional right to due process; his right to choose a country of removal other than one in which he would be tortured, as guaranteed under the Torture Victims Protection Act; and his rights under international law.
The suit charges that Mr. Arar's Fifth Amendment due process rights were violated when he was confined without access to an attorney or the court system, both domestically before being rendered, and while detained by the Syrian government, whose actions were complicit with the U.S. Additionally, the Attorney General and INS officials who carried out his deportation also likely violated his right to due process by recklessly subjecting him to torture at the hands of a foreign government that they had every reason to believe would carry out abusive interrogation.
Further, Mr. Arar filed a claim under the Torture Victims Protection Act, adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1992, which allows a victim of torture by an individual of a foreign government to bring suit against that actor in U.S. Court. Mr. Arar's claim under the Act against Ashcroft and the INS directors is based upon their complicity in bringing about the torture he suffered. The case was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
In the case, Arar is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and a declaration that the actions of the U.S. government were illegal and violated Mr. Arar's constitutional, civil, and international human rights.
A year after the case was filed, the U.S. government invoked the rarely-used “State Secrets Privilege” in a motion to dismiss the suit. The government claimed that to go forward in an open court would jeopardize the United States' intelligence, foreign policy, and national security interests.
On February 16, 2006, Brooklyn District Court Judge David Trager dismissed Arar's lawsuit against members of the Bush administration,[5] basing his decision on national security grounds, not legal reasons.
CCR attorneys have appealed the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Canadian government response
The rendition of Maher Arar has received much attention and scrutiny in Canada, both in the media and in the government.
Initial media controversy
Arar's case reached new heights of controversy after Juliet O'Neill wrote an article in the Ottawa Citizen on November 8, 2003, containing information leaked to her from an unknown security source, possibly within the RCMP. The secret documents provided by her source suggested Arar was a trained member of an Al Qaeda terrorist cell. The RCMP later raided O'Neill's house pursuant to search warrants it had obtained to investigate the leak. RCMP raids reporter's offices over Arar case The raid was widely denounced in the media.
Garvie Report
On September 25, 2004, the results of an internal RCMP investigation by RCMP Chief Superintendent Brian Garvie were published. Though the version released to the public was censored, the Garvie Report documented several instances of impropriety by the RCMP in the Arar case. Among its revelations were that the RCMP was responsible for giving American authorities sensitive information on Arar with no attached provisos about how this information might be used. Also, Richard Roy, the RCMP liaison officer with the Department of Foreign Affairs, may have known of the plan of removing Arar to Syria but did not contact his supervisors. Additionally, Deputy RCMP Commissioner Garry Loeppky lobbied hard, in the spring of 2003, to convince his government (then led by Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien) not to claim in a letter to Syria, that it "had no evidence Arar was involved in any terrorist activities" because Arar "remained a person of great interest."
In response to the Garvie Report, Arar said that the report was "just the starting point to find out the truth about what happened to me" and that it "exposes the fact that the government was misleading the public when they said Canada had nothing to do with sending me to Syria."
Canadian Commission of Inquiry
On February 5, 2004, the Canadian government established the "Canadian Commission Of Inquiry Into The Actions of Canadian Officials In Relation to Maher Arar" to investigate and report on the actions of Canadian officials. The United States refused to participate in the inquiry and, until January 2007, refused to share its own evidence with Canadian officials.
On June 14, 2005, Franco Pillarella, Canadian ambassador to Syria at the time of Arar's removal, said that at the time he had no reason to believe Arar had been badly treated, and in general had no reason to conclusively believe that Syria engaged in routine torture. These statements prompted widespread incredulity in the Canadian media, and a former Canadian UN ambassador responded to Pillarella asserting that Syria's human rights abuses were well known and well documented by many sources.
On September 14, 2005, the O'Connor commission concluded public hearings after testimony from 85 witnesses. The U.S. ambassador at the time of the incident, Paul Cellucci, refused to testify.
On October 27, 2005, a fact-finder appointed by the Arar inquiry released a report saying that he believed Arar was tortured in Syria. He said that Arar had recovered well physically but was still suffering from psychological problems caused by his mistreatment.
On September 18, 2006, the Canadian Commission of Inquiry, led by Dennis O’Connor, Associate Chief Justice of Ontario, issued its report. The final report exonerates Arar and categorically states that there is no evidence linking Arar to terrorist activity, stating “there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada.” The Commission also found no evidence that Canadian officials acquiesced in the U.S. decision to detain and remove Mr. Arar to Syria, but that it is very likely that the U.S. relied on inaccurate and unfair information about Mr. Arar that was provided by Canadian officials. The report also confirms that he was tortured while in Syria. Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Analysis and Recommendations, , , , , 2006, Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Factual Background Volume I, , , , , 2006, Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Factual Background Volume II, , , , , 2006,
On August 9, 2007, an addendum to the final report containing previously undisclosed portions was released. The final report was released with certain portions blacked out for reasons of national security by the Canadian government. Under the rules for the Inquiry, the decision to release the remaining portions of the final report were to be decided within the Canadian courts. In July 2007, the Federal Court ruled that portions of the previously removed text could be released. Addendum to Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Volume I, II, and Analysis and Recommendations, , , , , 2006,
RCMP apology
On September 28, 2006, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli issued a carefully worded public apology to Arar and his family during the House of Commons committee on public safety and national security:
Mr. Arar, I wish to take this opportunity to express publicly to you and to your wife and to your children how truly sorry I am for whatever part the actions of the RCMP may have contributed to the terrible injustices that you experienced and the pain that you and your family endured. RCMP chief apologizes to Arar for 'terrible injustices'
Arar thanked Commissioner Zaccardelli for his apology but lamented the lack of concrete disciplinary action against those individuals whose actions led to his detention and subsequent torture. Arar thanks RCMP chief for apology Zaccardelli later resigned as RCMP commissioner because of this case.
Canadian government apology and settlement
On January 26, 2007, after months of negotiations between the Canadian government and Arar's Canadian legal counsel, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology to Arar on behalf of the Canadian government and announced that Arar would receive $10.5 million settlement for his ordeal and an additional $1 million for legal costs.[6]
On January 26, 2007, Harper released a copy of a letter sent to Arar, apologizing "for any role Canadian officials may have played in what happened to Mr. Arar, Monia Mazigh and their family in 2002 and 2003."[7]
Aftermath
In Canada, Arar's ordeal has raised numerous questions that have yet to be answered. Canadian authorities have been unable to discover who leaked sensitive government documents to O'Neill. Those who were involved in the case in the RCMP have not been reprimanded by the government for their mistakes. In fact, several have received promotions.[8]
As of December 2006, the only person held accountable in Canada has been RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, who actually resigned over contradictions in his testimony to the House of Commons Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The contradictions were with respect to what he knew at the time and what he told government ministers.[9]
Many commentators and Liberal MPs also dog Harper's government with statements made by its members while they were the official opposition in the House of Commons. Several Conservative party members, including Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, apparently assumed Arar's guilt, labeling him a terrorist.[10][11]
U.S. government response
The Bush administration continues to maintain that Arar's rendition to Syria was legal and well within its right. Extraordinary rendition may be legal: documents Canadian Press The government has not publicly acknowledged that Arar was tortured in Syria – the United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stated that he has seen no evidence other than Arar's own account that he was tortured.
U.S. Attorney General Gonzales's response to the Arar inquiry
On September 19, 2006, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied any wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. in Arar's rendition to Syria. Gonzales defends Arar deportation after Canadian inquiry report
During a press conference Gonzales said: Transcript of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras at Press Conference Announcing Identity Theft Task Force Interim Recommendations
"Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria, I'm not aware that he was tortured, and I haven't read the Commission report. Mr. Arar was deported under our immigration laws. He was initially detained because his name appeared on terrorist lists, and he was deported according to our laws.
"Some people have characterized his removal as a rendition. That is not what happened here. It was a deportation. And even if it were a rendition, we understand as a government what our obligations are with respect to anyone who is rendered by this government to another country, and that is that we seek to satisfy ourselves that they will not be tortured. And we do that in every case. And if in fact he had been rendered to Syria, we would have sought those same kind of assurances, as we do in every case."
On September 20, 2006, Charles Miller, a DoJ spokesman, said Gonzales had merely been trying to clarify that deportations were no longer the responsibility of the Department of Justice, but were now the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. DOJ retreats from Gonzales disavowal of responsibility for Arar deportation
Watchlist issue
Despite the inquiry's exoneration of Arar, the United States has also refused to remove Arar from its watchlist. Stockwell Day was invited to look at the evidence in the United States' possession in January 2007. In his opinion, the administration is unjustified in continuing to bar Arar from entering the United States. Reportedly, the United States continues to refuse to remove Arar from their watchlist because of "his personal associations and travel history."[12]
Following Day's efforts to remove Arar from the watchlist, U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins chided Canada for questioning who the United States can and cannot allow into their country.[13] Notwithstanding, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vowed to continue to press the United States on this matter. On January 26, 2007, Mr. Harper rebuked Mr. Wilkins with respect to the Canadian government's efforts to remove him from the U.S. watch list, stating "Canada has every right to go to bat for one of its citizens when the government believes a Canadian is being unfairly treated."[14]
Dissent in U.S. Congress
Meanwhile, in the United States, Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has theatened to hold extensive hearings into Arar's case. Leahy has lambasted the US's removal of Arar to Syria as absurd and outrageous, noting that instead of sending Arar a "couple of hundred miles to Canada and turned over to the Canadian authorities... he was sent thousands of miles away to Syria." Senator Leahy spoke at length on the matter, calling the case "a black mark" on the United States: "We knew damn well, if he went to Canada, he wouldn't be tortured. He'd be held. He'd be investigated. We also knew damn well, if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured. And it's beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured."[15]
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales noted that the United States had assurances from Syria that Arar would not be tortured. This was dismissed by Leahy, remarking that the United States got "assurances from a country that we also say, now, we can't talk to them because we can't take their word for anything?" The Senator was alluding to the Bush administration's labeling of Syria as a member of the "axis of evil" and its policy of refraining from talking to Iran and Syria. Syria is also on the U.S. State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism.
Dispute over Canadian involvement in his rendition
After Arar's release, the controversy continued over his treatment by the U.S. and over the role that Canadian police and government officials may have played in his removal and interrogation. The United States claimed that the RCMP had provided them with a list of suspicious persons that included Arar. RCMP passed along Arar's name, U.S. says
It was also discovered that Canadian consular officials knew that Arar was in custody in the United States but did not believe that he would be removed. The Canadian government maintains that the decision to remove Arar to Syria was made by American officials alone.
Canadian officials apparently told U.S. officials Arar was no longer a resident of Canada. ''The New York Times'' reported, "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." [16]
At a summit meeting in Monterrey, Mexico, on January 13, 2004, former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and U.S. President George W. Bush reached an agreement, sometimes referred to as the Monterrey Accord, which obliged the United States to notify Canada before deporting a Canadian citizen to a third country. However, according to a news story in the Toronto ''Globe and Mail'', Stephen Yale-Loehr, lawyer and adjunct professor of immigration and asylum law at Cornell University told the Arar inquiry "the Canada-U.S. agreement struck... to prevent a recurrence of the Arar affair is ineffective and legally unenforceable."[17]
In 2007, as part of the investigation into government foreknowledge, it was revealed that CSIS chief Jack Hooper had sent a memo on October 10, 2002 that included the reference "''I think the United States would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him"'', which was the first conclusive evidence that CSIS, and not just the RCMP, knew that a Canadian was going to be tortured at the request of the United States.[18] A year later, Hooper contacted the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to tell them that it was not in Canada's interests to demand that the United States return Maher Arar.[19]
Canada's formal protest to the U.S. government
During a telephone conversation on October 6, 2006, Harper notified President Bush that Canada intended to lodge a formal protest over U.S. treatment of Arar. The notification was later followed by a letter of protest sent from Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter MacKay to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.{{cite web|first=Caitlin |last=Price|url=http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2006/10/canada-makes-formal-protest-of-us-arar.php|title=Canada makes formal protest of US Arar treatment|publisher=The Jurist|date=2006-10-07 Harper told reporters that Canada wants "the United States government [to] come clean with its version of events, to acknowledge... the deficiencies and inappropriate conduct that occurred in this case, particularly vis-à-vis its relationship with the Canadian government." In particular, Canada wants United States assurances, said Harper, that "these kinds of incidents will not be repeated in the future." 'Come clean' on Arar, Harper asks U.S.
U.S. embassy statements
Robert H. Tuttle, the US ambassador to Britain told the BBC on December 22, 2005:
"I don't think there is any evidence that there have been any renditions carried out in the country of Syria. There is no evidence of that. And I think we have to take what the secretary Condoleezza Rice says at face value. It is something very important, it is done very carefully and she has said we do not authorise, condone torture in any way, shape or form."
This statement was amended the very next day by a U.S. embassy spokeswoman who stated that the embassy
"recognised that there had been a media report of a rendition to Syria but reiterated that the United States is not in a position to comment on specific allegations of intelligence activities that appear in the press". [20]
Miscellaneous facts
★ Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, ran unsuccessfully as the NDP candidate in the Ottawa South riding in the 2004 federal election.
★ TIME magazine chose Arar as "Canadian Newsmaker of the Year" for 2004.
★ On October 18, 2006, Arar and the Center for Constitutional Rights were honoured with the Institute for Policy Studies Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award, in recognition of the struggle to clear his name and draw attention to American abuses of human rights in dealing with terrorist suspects.[21]
★ Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, discusses Arar sympathetically in his bestselling 2005 book ''Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis''.
★ Amy Goodman, host of the radio program ''Democracy Now!'', and her brother David Goodman write about Arar in their 2006 book, ''Static''.
★ In April of 2007, TIME magazine named Arar to the TIME 100, its annual listing of 100 influential people in the world.[22] Arar's entry, at No. 58 in the Heroes & Pioneers category, was written by US Senator Leahy and says his case "stands as a sad example of how we have been too willing to sacrifice our core principles to overarching government power in the name of security, when doing so only undermines the principles we stand for and makes us less safe." The US would not allow him entry to attend Time's recognition event.[23]
See also
★ Bashir Makhtal
★ Arwad al-Boushi
References
1. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2001 (Syria)
2. The Arar Chronicles: From Success to Suspect (Part 1) Don Butler
3. The Arar Chronicles: Person of Interest (Part 1) Don Butler
4. Outsourcing Torture
5. U.S. ruling dismisses Arar lawsuit Tim Harper
6. Harper announces .5M compensation for Arar
7. Prime Minister Releases Letter of Apology to Maher Arar and his Family and Announces Completion of Mediation Process
8. "Lack of Accountability Unacceptable
9. RCMP's embattled chief quits over Arar testimony
10. Lingering suspicion about Arar troubling
11. Opposition quotes on Arar from November 2002 Canadian Press
12. U.S. refuses to take Arar off watch list
13. Harper's apology 'means the world': Arar
14. U.S. refuses to take Arar off watch list
15. Transcript of Gonzales-Leahy exchange on Arar
16. Canadians Fault U.S. for Its Role in Torture Case
17. Deportation pact useless, inquiry told, , Michael Den, Tandt, The Globe and Mail,
18. CSIS Suspected Arar Could Face Torture: Documents Canadian Press
19. CSIS didn't want Arar returned to Canada
20. US embassy close to admitting Syria rendition flight Ewen MacAskill
21. International Award: Maher Arar and the Center for Constitutional Rights
22. The TIME 100:Maher Arar Patrick Leahy
23. Arar on Time's '100 most influential' list, but he's still not welcome in U.S. Andrew Duffy
External links
General
★ Maher Arar's official site
★ Video of interview with Maher Arar
★ "Maher Arar: Timeline", ''CBC'', updated September 28, 2006
★ Arar Commission official site
★ Apology Statement Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, September 26, 2007
★ "The Horrors of Extraordinary Rendition", A transcript of Maher Arar's Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award acceptance speech, detailing the events.
★ Legal Filings in Maher Arar's lawsuit against John Ashcroft From the Center for Constitutional Rights
★ Interview with Arar on the Disappeared In America website
★ Falsehoods led to man's torture, report says
★ Transcript and video of Maher Arar's acceptance speech for the Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award.
★ Declassified Report on the Events Relating to Maher Arar
News coverage
★ Explanation offered for his Detention
★ CBC News early report
★ CBC News report
★ CBC - Maher Arar reported freed
★ Canada starts an investigation
★ BBC - Interview with Robert Baer about the role of the CIA in the Middle East
Commentary
★ The Arar Report: The US Should Follow Canada's Lead, JURIST, September 27, 2006
★ Kafka in Canada: The Hounding of Maher Arar, Candide's Notebooks, January 26, 2007
This article provided by Wikipedia. To edit the contents of this article, click here for original source.
psst.. try this: add to faves
