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RCMP and FBI
on
the Hook for
Torture
by Barry Weisleder
The
report that exonerated Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar shines a critical
Northern Light on RCMP complicity with the U.S. ‘extraordinary rendition’
program, in which terror suspects are sent to prison in foreign countries
and often tortured during interrogations.
Justice
Dennis O’Connor, who headed the two-and-a-half-year Arar enquiry, blamed
the RCMP for giving erroneous information to American authorities that
Ottawa-resident engineer Maher Arar, his wife Monia Mazigh, and their two
young children were Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaeda, and for putting
them on a special watch list.
In
2002 U.S. police arrested Arar in New York on his return from a vacation,
and shipped him to Syria. There he was held in a tiny dungeon for 10 months
and beaten.
The
New York Times described the Arar case “as one of the infamous examples of
rendition” and said that it draws new attention to the Bush
administration’s handling of detainees at the same time the president and Congress
are arguing over legislation concerning the treatment and interrogation of
prisoners.
O’Connor
concluded that American officials had denied Arar’s request to speak with
the Canadian consulate in New York after he was taken into custody, a
violation of international agreements. And the FBI withheld information
about Arar’s whereabouts even while he was on his way to Jordan, and then
Syria.
Although
members of Canada’s parliament voted unanimously to apologize to Arar, the
Stephen Harper Conservative government has rejected calls for the dismissal
of RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, who spent a week dodging
reporters. Harper has ignored demands for financial compensation to Maher
Arar, and has yet even to issue a formal protest to Washington and the
Syrian government over Arar’s treatment.
At
the same time, Canadian media—which used material provided by unnamed
sources who had insisted that there was strong evidence linking Arar to a
terrorist cell—have failed to admit their errors, much less to apologize.
Justice O’Connor pointed to a story in the Ottawa Citizen that claimed that
Arar had been to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and a similar
story in the National Post, an allegation that O’Connor concludes was
absolutely false.
As
this case illustrates, the logic of arbitrary arrests and media smear
tactics, employed in an attempt to justify the attack on civil liberties
and the imperialist wars of occupation in the Middle East and Asia, appears
to be unravelling.
“The
U.S. is the leader in extraordinary renditions and requires the complicity
of other nations to carry out its program,” said Maria LaHood, a lawyer for
Arar. “It is clear that it will find a less willing ally in Canada in the
future because of what it did to Maher Arar.”
Well, that
remains to be seen. It depends very much on the activity of the broad
antiwar movement. Hopefully, the Oct. 28 demonstrations will not lose sight
of this issue. Meanwhile, Maher Arar is appealing a U.S. federal court
decision dismissing his lawsuit against U.S. officials.
Issues From 1996-2003:
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