Canadian Press
 
Updated: Thu. Sep. 15 2005 7:54 AM ET

OTTAWA — A public report on the Maher Arar affair will be delayed until next March, largely because of haggling over how much of the evidence ought to remain secret on national security grounds.

Paul Cavalluzzo, chief counsel to the inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor, said Wednesday that nobody realized, when work started last year, how arduous a task it would be to balance security concerns with the public's right to know.

"The commission had little appreciation of how much information would be subject to national security confidentiality claims," Cavalluzzo told a news conference.

"We learned as we went . . . It is clear that the length of our inquiry was significantly extended by the need to deal with these issues."

He noted the government has moderated its views in recent months about how much needs to be kept secret.

But continuing debate on the issue - expected to last well into the fall - has set back the inquiry's timetable.

O'Connor, who finished hearing the bulk of testimony this week, had hoped to deliver an interim report by the end of the year. He's now aiming at March 31, 2006.

It's the second high-profile commission created by Prime Minister Paul Martin's government to be knocked off schedule.

Justice John Gomery, head of the inquiry into the federal sponsorship scandal, still plans to table a first instalment of his findings in November but has put off his final report until February.

In the case of O'Connor, the report will come 25 months after creation of the inquiry - twice the time Arar spent in a Syrian prison where he says he was beaten into false confessions of terrorist activity.

The 36-year-old Ottawa engineer alluded to the emotional impact earlier this week, when he noted he's been reliving his ordeal through the months of testimony.

"It's been very stressful, it's been very tiring, it's been very frustrating," he said. "I frequently had flashbacks of what happened to me when I was tortured."

Cavalluzzo said he's hopeful the remaining national security claims can be resolved without going to Federal Court - the government's last resort if it disagrees with O'Connor about how much evidence to make public.

A court battle would delay the inquiry's report even further. But Cavalluzzo is counting on public opinion to dissuade federal officials from going that route.

"I'm optimistic," he said. "The public is aware and very tuned in to our inquiry, and I think there will be a great deal of public pressure to have the report released."

The inquiry has spent about $8 million so far of its anticipated budget of $11.2 million. Additional costs run up by various federal agencies appearing before O'Connor have driven the total bill to taxpayers to well over $20 million.

Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian birth, was arrested in September 2002 by U.S. authorities who claimed he had ties to al-Qaida and deported him to Syria rather than letting him return to Canada.

The RCMP, which previously had him under surveillance but never found any hard evidence against him, has admitted sharing information about the case with U.S. officials.

But both the Mounties and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service say they played no part in the U.S. decision to send Arar to Syria.

There have been persistent questions, however, about whether they collaborated with Sryian authorities once he was in Damascus.

Questions have also arisen about the treatment of other Arab-Canadians, including Abdullah Almalki of Ottawa and Ahmad El Maati of Toronto.

Both were targeted in the same RCMP investigation as Arar, and both say they were detained and tortured when they visited Syria on personal business.

Amnesty International and other human rights groups say the cases suggest a disturbing pattern in which Canada may be "contracting out" the torture of terror suspects to oppressive regimes abroad.

The groups have called on the government to launch an investigation of the additional cases.

O'Connor has already heard extensive evidence about Almalki and El Maati, although much of the testimony was in camera.

"He does have that evidence," said Cavalluzzo. "If it established complicity or pattern, he will be in a position to make that determination. But we'll have to await his report for that."