ISN Security Watch
Tuesday, 11 November 2003

Canadian 'torture victim' highlights US-Syrian cooperation
 
The Canadian government's discomfort over the case of a man 
deported to Syria by US agents deepened on Wednesday when 
legislators and major newspapers demanded an inquiry into what 
role Canada's police may have played in the affair. Maher Arar 
said on Tuesday he had been regularly tortured during the year 
he spent in Syria. US authorities alleged he was a member of 
al-Qaida and say privately they acted on data supplied by 
Canadian police. Critics are now asking whether Canada and the 
US deliberately conspired to deport Arar - a 33-year-old 
telecommunications engineer - to a country whose human rights 
record has long been condemned. Ottawa refuses to say what 
information if any on Arar was handed over to Washington and 
has ruled out calls for a public inquiry. The Washington Post 
said on Wednesday that the Arar case fitted the profile of a 
covert Central Intelligence Agency so-called extraordinary 
rendition - "the practice of turning over low-level, suspected 
terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of which are 
known to torture prisoners". The Ottawa Citizen newspaper said 
it was concerned that "our principal ally seems willing to 
ship one of our citizens to another country without due 
process of law and where he faced torture in jail". Arar was 
arrested while changing planes at New York's JFK airport in 
September 2002. During his interrogation US investigators 
produced a copy of his 1997 Ottawa apartment rental lease, 
which another Syrian-Canadian, Abdullah Almalki, had signed as 
a witness. Arar met Almalki in jail in Syria and said he had 
been tortured even more severely. Almalki's family is now 
demanding that Ottawa do more to secure his release. (Reuters)