Associated Press
 
Updated: Sun. Dec. 3 2006 11:55 PM ET

OTTAWA — RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, already under fire for the force's handling of the Maher Arar affair, will have more explaining to do when he faces yet another grilling by MPs this week.

In his last appearance at the Commons public safety committee two months ago, the country's top cop fended off demands for his resignation, suggesting that would be too easy a way out.

"Three are two kinds of people in this world,'' Zaccardelli told the all-party panel.

"There are those who are faced with difficulties and they throw up their hands and walk away from the challenge. Then there are those who roll up their sleeves and decide they're going to fix what went wrong. I'm a person who fits in the latter category.''

Zaccardelli stumbled, however, when MPs pressed him on some key details of what went wrong in the Arar case.

The Syrian-Canadian telecommunications engineer was arrested by U.S. authorities in the fall of  2002 and deported to Damascus, where he was tortured into false confessions of terrorist activity.

Justice Dennis O'Connor, who conducted a public inquiry into the affair, concluded the Americans "very likely'' acted on the basis of erroneous information provided by the Mounties -- a document that described Arar as an "Islamic extremist'' with suspected ties to al-Qaida.

In fact, he was a peripheral figure in an RCMP anti-terrorist investigation who came to the Mounties' attention only because he had been spotted talking to another man targeted by the probe.

Zaccardelli said he wasn't informed of the mistake until Arar was already in Syria. He repeatedly insisted the force had "tried'' to correct the error in private with U.S. officials, but never explained why he didn't go public at the time.

The commissioner was also vague on whether he shared the fact the Mounties had bungled with his political masters in Ottawa.

He maintained that briefing material was prepared for unnamed federal "officials'' but was unclear on whether that included members of the Liberal cabinet then in power.

Former ministers Wayne Easter and Anne McLellan have since testified that Zaccardelli never told them about the mistake. Ward Elcock, then head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, has also said he was kept in the dark.

"In fact (Zaccardelli) withheld information about that investigation,'' says Liberal MP Mark Holland, one of the RCMP chief's fiercest critics.

"I have no idea how he will try to explain this . . .  This is about as troubling as you can get.''

But it won't be the only point on which committee members will confront Zaccardelli when he appears before them again Tuesday.

The commissioner told them in September he found it "deplorable'' that someone had leaked misleading information to the media about Arar after his return to Canada, using the confession extracted under torture as proof of his purported terrorist ties.

Zaccardell noted his deputy commissioner and "right-hand person,'' Gary Loeppky, had personally organized an investigation to get to the bottom of the leaks.

"Everything possible will be done,'' he promised. "Everybody is being looked at, nobody is excluded.''

Less than month later, an Ontario judge quashed RCMP search warrants used to raid the home and office of Juliet O'Neill, an Ottawa Citizen reporter, in an effort to discover her sources for a leaked story.

Justice Lynn Ratushny struck down portions of the federal security  law used to obtain the warrants and excoriated the Mounties for targeting a journalist.

Investigators considered O'Neill an "easy target,'' said the judge, and the raid was a thinly veiled attempt at "intimidating her into compromising her constitutional right of freedom of the press.''

When the Conservative government refused to appeal the judgment it appeared the investigation of the leaks had hit a dead end -- although the Mounties refused to admit it.

A spokesman for the force contended the probe would continue but couldn't explain what new avenues would be pursued.