bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Islamophobia - Prejudice:
Arar cleared at last - Looks forward to enjoying 'normal life'
Janice Tibbetts and Neco Cockburn, The Ottawa Citizen; with a file from the Canadian Press
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=a7d66769-ce98-4738-8cdc-38b29cb0156d
An inexperienced RCMP anti-terrorism squad gave false information to American authorities -- tagging Maher Arar as an "Islamic extremist" -- which very likely set off a chain of events leading to his deportation and torture in Syria, an exhaustive inquiry has found.
The inquiry's report, made public yesterday, unequivocally cleared Mr. Arar, a 36-year-old Syrian-Canadian, of any "taint or suspicion" that he has terrorist ties and called for federal compensation for his one-year ordeal in a Syrian jail.
"I am able to say categorically that 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," wrote Justice Dennis O'Connor, who led the inquiry.
The RCMP bore the brunt of blame in the 1,200-page report, crafted after a public inquiry was struck to get to the bottom of how Mr. Arar was arrested by U.S. authorities in September 2002 while travelling through New York's JFK Airport and deported to Syria.
He was released a year later, without charges, and returned to his Ottawa home.
The report stressed there is no evidence Canadian officials "participated or acquiesced" in the U.S. decision to bundle Mr. Arar on a plane for Syria.
The Mounties, however, failed Mr. Arar, a former software engineer who recently moved to Kamloops, B.C., by advising American officials to put him and his wife, Monia Mazigh, on a U.S. watch list in October 2001.
"The requests indicated they were part of a group of Islamic extremist individuals suspected of being linked to al-Qaeda, a description that was inaccurate, without any basis and potentially extremely inflammatory in the United States in the fall of 2001," the report said.
"The RCMP had no basis for this description, which had the potential to create serious consequences for Mr. Arar in light of American attitudes and practices at the time."
Judge O'Connor went on to conclude that "it is very likely that, in making the decisions to detain and remove Mr. Arar, American authorities relied on information about Mr. Arar provided by the RCMP."
Mr. Arar, who flew to Ottawa for the report's release, said he is relieved that his name finally has been cleared.
"I call this the beginning of going back to a normal life," he told a press conference, his voice often breaking with emotion.
Mr. Arar's lawyer, Marlys Edwardh, denounced the RCMP investigation as "breath-takingly incompetent."
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said yesterday that "the compensation question is a fair one" and that the government is open to the prospect in light of a lawsuit that Mr. Arar has already filed against the government.
Mr. Day stopped short, however, of apologizing to the former Ottawa engineer and father of two.
"The whole aspect of what happened to Mr. Arar is regrettable, there's no question about that. We hope that with any future situations like this we will never see this again."
The report found that RCMP told the U.S. to put Mr. Arar on a watch list even though the Mounties had identified him only as a "person of interest" as a result of a three-hour meeting with another Ottawa man who was a terrorist suspect.
Project A-O Canada, the Ottawa-area anti-terrorism team that the RCMP formed on the fly in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was inexperienced, lacked training in national security, human rights and cultural sensitivity and even neglected to follow their own policies, the report found.
"In this regard, the RCMP failed completely, particularly in the critically important area of information sharing with American agencies," he said.
While acknowledging the importance of the anti-terrorism squad, Judge O'Connor chastised the RCMP for not following the agency's own rules, which required "lookout" alerts to U.S. border authorities to be accompanied by "caveats" on how the information was to be used.
"The fact that Project A-O Canada did not attach written caveats to the information about Mr. Arar provided to American agencies increased the risk that those agencies would use the information for purposes unacceptable to the RCMP, such as removing him to Syria."
The RCMP also handed over to the Americans the entire contents of Project A-O's investigative database, contained on three compact discs, without screening the information, the report notes.
The report made 23 recommendations, including training for RCMP involved in national security investigations, a new system for submitting "lookout" alerts to foreign countries about Canadian citizens, and a ban on CSIS and the RCMP sharing information internationally that could lead to torture.
Mr. Day said yesterday that there is already a new protocol in place with the United States on how to handle cases involving Canadians who are detained there, and that the government will consider all other recommendations.
Paul Cavalluzzo, the inquiry's chief counsel, said the aim of the report is not to shut down collaboration with the police and security services of allied countries. Such exchanges of information are vital in the fight against global terrorism, he noted.
"But it has to be done in a principled way, it has to be accurate, it has to be relevant, it has to ensure that people's human rights are protected.
"In this day and age, calling somebody a terrorist is like calling somebody a communist in the early '50s. It has serious connotations."
A significant part of the inquiry's hearings were conducted behind closed doors, and some of the details in Judge O'Connor's report were censored on national security grounds.
The judge, in a letter accompanying the report, objected to the deletions and asked the government to refer the matter to Federal Court to determine whether the deleted information should be made public.
The censored material amounted to less than one-half of one per cent of the report, said a source familiar with the process. But commission counsel Mr. Cavalluzzo said he'd like to see the matter resolved in court as a "matter of principle."
******************
At last, some light for Arar
The Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/editorials/story.html?id=b0fe4389-2fc2-46c4-88fd-2127860f4f61
How easily, how quickly one's life can totally change. For Maher Arar, his trip to a Syrian torture room began with what seemed to be an innocent meal in an Ottawa cafe that was watched by an RCMP counter-terrorism unit because the lunch date was a man under suspicion.
So Mr. Arar became a "person of interest," in the language of the war on terror.
If that was where the words stopped, Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor would not have issued a three-volume report yesterday that details, with some deletions for security reasons, why this innocent man from Ottawa became an international cause celebre for those who are concerned about the excesses of the war on terror.
But the words did not stop there. The RCMP, in a breach of its protocols, turned Mr. Arar and his wife, both of whom they knew to be no more than possible witnesses about the activities of others, into "Islamic extremists" on national-security warnings issued to Canadian and U.S. border services.
Judge O'Connor does not attack the RCMP's rules of engagement surrounding the sharing of information with other security services. In fact, he says the procedures are fine and that it is proper to share information.
The problem in the Arar case is that the procedures weren't followed and the information was in many instances wrong.
Many of the errors committed by the A-O Canada unit and the unit's superiors at the RCMP's A Division are understandable, but they are not acceptable. There was a great deal of pressure on the force to investigate possible terrorist plots because other attacks were expected. The Americans were pushing their old friends to hunt down any terror lead.
But, after being out of the national-security game for decades, the Mounties didn't have investigators skilled in hunting terrorists -- a task that is preventative, aimed at disrupting plots as much as it is about arresting the plotters.
Those under surveillance are not necessarily guilty. Therefore, rules that protect the innocent, especially when sharing information with other services, must be followed. In Maher Arar's case they were not.
Some will say that the judge's report shows that no Canadian official was directly involved in sending Mr. Arar to Syria. True. It was an American decision. But that does not excuse officials, especially in the RCMP, from culpability. The Americans based their decision upon faulty Canadian information.
Key in the 23 recommendations made by Judge O'Connor are ones that call for the absolute following of the force's own protocols protecting human rights to the letter, and the establishment of an oversight body to review multi-force national security investigations.
There is also a call to compensate Mr. Arar, something the government seems to be already moving on. Mr. Arar was a citizen of this community, a neighbour. Wrongful treatment by police services often results in compensation.
There is a value in secrecy in matters of national security. Five years from 9/11, we need to push back the boundaries over what is secret to preserve our liberties, and also to learn from our mistakes. Judge O'Connor's report helps us reach that kind of understanding.
******************
Related News:
APOLOGIZE NOW TO ARAR AND AGREE TO COMPENSATION, SAYS NDP
http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net
MMN Note: Here is the official press release from the Arar inquiry
http://www.ararcommission.ca/eng/ReleaseFinal_Sept18.pdf
And here is the full text of the inquiry report:
http://www.ararcommission.ca/eng/26.htm
Ottawa must learn from Arar fiasco
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1158617411766&call_page=TS_EditorialOpinion&call_pageid=968256290204&call_pagepath=Editorial/Opinion&pubid=968163964505
Arar inquiry calls for review of terror suspects' cases
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=bb0a167e-c8c1-4801-bf7a-ecc18cac0103&k=76116
How Canada failed to protect Maher Arar
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060919.wearar19/BNStory/Front
MEDIA ADVISORY: Montreal Protest against Canadian complicity in all kidnap and torture, illegal and "legal" - Sept 21
http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net
An indictment of racial profiling
http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/letters/story.html?id=461de6c6-e5be-47db-b288-bc80b5da730c
Others seek answers, too
http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net
===
-muslim voice-
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