Ottawa — The No. 2 man at Canada's spy service is vigorously denying claims that his agency wanted Maher Arar to remain in Syria rather than be freed from prison and return home.
"I can say categorically that this was never the position of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service," Jack Hooper, deputy director of CSIS, told a public inquiry Thursday.
Mr. Hooper was challenged on virtually every point of his testimony by Paul Cavalluzzo, the chief counsel to the inquiry.
Mr. Cavalluzzo noted, for example, that CSIS:
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—Never directly contacted Syrian intelligence officials to correct the impression they held that Canada didn't really want Mr. Arar back.
—Advised Wayne Easter, the minister responsible at the time for police and security matters, to join then-foreign minister Bill Graham in sending a joint letter to Damascus appealing for Arar's repatriation.
—Joined the RCMP in insisting that, although there was no hard evidence against Mr. Arar, he remained a "person of interest" in an anti-terrorist investigation in Canada.
—Warned Mr. Easter that a public appeal for his release could spark political reaction from the United States and lead the Americans to question Canada's resolve in the global war on terrorism.
—Pointed out to Mr. Easter that Ottawa had been embarrassed when it lobbied for the release of a Pakistani-born Canadian, Ahmad Khadr, who was jailed in India. He was in fact released but later found to be an al-Qaeda kingpin.
Mr. Hooper acknowledged all those points, but continued to maintain that CSIS never flatly stated it was opposed to Mr. Arar's release and return to Canada.
"You don't have to say you don't want him back if you're only bringing forward to your minister negative considerations," shot back Mr. Cavalluzzo.
He wondered why CSIS never made any positive arguments for the repatriation of Mr. Arar — and was told by Hooper it wasn't his job.
Arguments for Mr. Arar's release on humanitarian and other grounds were being made strenuously by Mr. Graham and his officials at Foreign Affairs," said Mr. Hooper.
"That's the way the system works."
Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian birth, was arrested by U.S. authorities in New York in the fall of 2002 and deported to Syria on suspicion of terrorist activity.
He denies the accusations and says he was tortured into false confessions in Damascus. The Syrians finally released him without charge — despite the purported confessions — and allowed him to return to Canada in late 2003.
The Ottawa telecommunications engineer had come to the attention of the RCMP through an anti-terrorist investigation known as Project A-O Canada.
Although he was not considered a criminal suspect, he came under surveillance because of links to other Arab-Canadians who were the main targets of the probe.