CTV.ca News Staff
 
Updated: Sun. Jan. 23 2005 8:16 AM ET

The U.S. government filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Maher Arar, claiming information released on his deportation would threaten national security, The Toronto Star reported.

U.S. Department of Justice lawyers said if information was released on U.S. involvement in Arar's deportation to Syria in 2002, it could endanger "intelligence, foreign policy and national security interests of the United States."

Lawyers who filed the motion on Arar's behalf say it's an attempt to avoid a review of its policy on terrorism suspects.

"They're asking the court to sanction their cover-up basically," Maria LaHood, lawyer with New York's Center for Constitutional Rights told The Star Friday.

The lawsuit, which was launched last January in the U.S., alleges that U.S. officials within President George Bush's administration knew Arar would be tortured.

Arar was detained as he travelled through a New York airport in September 2002, on suspicion of ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network.

U.S. authorities deported him to Syria via Jordan, where he was allegedly tortured and held without charges for a year before his release in 2003.

Arar and his wife Monia Mazigh have also been pressing the Canadian government to release information about his case to the public.

Last month, Arar reminded Canadians that "very little has been public" since Liberal cabinet minister Anne McLellan ordered an inquiry into the matter more than a year ago.

Arar said one of the questions he wanted to see answer was "whether the security services in this country are contracting out interrogations to foreign agencies."