U.S. must accept the truth about Arar
The United States was complicit in the torture of an innocent Canadian citizen. Yet it has never been called to account for sending Maher Arar to his Syrian prison nightmare.
Canadians would be shocked beyond words if the United States captured a Canadian on U.S. soil and tortured him. But what happened to Mr. Arar was very much like that. The U.S. government apprehended him in a New York airport and shipped him to Syria, where he was tortured. Canadians should be just as shocked and outraged as if the torture happened in New York.
Far from admitting to the gross wrong it committed, the U.S. government persists in claiming it acted lawfully. This claim has never been put to the test. The United States refused to testify at the Canadian inquiry into the Maher Arar affair. When Mr. Arar sued the U.S. government in a New York court, it successfully argued that it could not defend the lawsuit without revealing state secrets. No court, no judge, no inquiry has exposed what the government did.
In fact, there is nothing to stop it from doing the same thing again. Washington has signed an agreement to consult Canada first if a similar situation arises. Some protection.
Mr. Arar was deported to Syria without being given a chance to plead his case before a judge. In a crucial hearing before an adjudicator, he went unrepresented by counsel. Given the risks to Mr. Arar -- the United States has acknowledged that Syria tortures prisoners -- how could this be legal?
The U.S. government offered a startling answer to this question in court, before Mr. Arar's lawsuit was thrown out: Foreigners at its airports -- even those just changing planes -- can be seized, detained and deprived of lawyers or access to courts if they are not ruled admissible to the country. That sounds more like Syria than one of the world's great democracies.
U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales said this week that his government asked Syria for assurance that Mr. Arar would not be tortured. "I'm not aware that he was tortured," he said. The statements do not add up. If the United States had been sincere in seeking that assurance, it would have taken steps to make sure the promise was kept. There is no evidence that it did.
It is a matter of public record that Mr. Arar was tortured. Stephen Toope, a Canadian legal scholar, was retained by this country's judicial inquiry into the Arar affair to report on Mr. Arar's treatment in Syrian detention. His 23-page report confirmed the torture. That report has never been publicly contradicted. Mr. Gonzales says he is unaware of that record. There is no sign that his government has inquired into what actually happened, or ever will.
Canada has been facing up to its responsibilities in the Arar case, as it should. The RCMP behaved despicably in telling U.S. authorities Mr. Arar was suspected of al-Qaeda links. That statement was "without any basis," the judicial inquiry reported .
But it was the United States that delivered Mr. Arar to his torturers. At every step it sought to conceal its plans. It hid them from Canadian authorities. It did not bring Mr. Arar before a judge. It put him on a plane to the Middle East after midnight -- a sure sign it had something to hide.
If Mr. Gonzales is right when he says his government acted lawfully in deporting Mr. Arar to Syria, the United States believes it is legal to outsource torture.
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