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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (203753)	9/20/2006 7:53:45 PM
From: Ichy Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

1. Who owns the CBC? 2. but that inaccurate RCMP information supplied to the U.S. "very likely" led to those events No bad information no deportation 3.Harper has faced opposition calls to apologize and offer compensation to Arar, saying the former engineer suffered a "tremendous injustice." However, Harper stopped short of offering an apology. It wasn't Harpers government that did this, it was the Liberal Government of Jean Chretien. Jean Chretien should be offering the apology. It is like asking Clinton to apologise for Bush I.....

To: bentway who wrote (203753)	9/20/2006 8:23:02 PM
From: Ichy Smith	Respond to of 281500

So Canada doesn't render people, but it sure as heck was in as deep as it could get.......... Documents suggest Canadian involvement in Arar interrogation Last Updated Fri, 22 Apr 2005 08:24:59 EDT CBC News OTTAWA - Supporters of Maher Arar say new documents show some Canadian officials actively encouraged his interrogation in a Syrian prison. They say questions about Canada's complicity in Arar's detention and torture are rampant in the more than 2,000 pages of government e-mail, memos and handwritten notes released Thursday by the public inquiry into Arar's case. Maher Arar (CP File Photo) U.S. officials deported Arar, a Canadian citizen, to Syria in 2002 as a suspected terrorist. He spent a year in prison where he says he was tortured. The documents released Thursday suggest senior Canadian officials failed to act to prevent Arar's deportation – and once he was in Syria, Canadian authorities appeared more interested in Arar's interrogation than his treatment. Among the pages marked "top secret" and "for Canadian eyes only," the most provocative were authored by Franco Pillarella, Canada's ambassador to Syria at the time Arar was deported to Damascus. Just days after Arar arrived at a Syrian military prison, Pillarella's memos back to Ottawa say his Syrian contact has told him that Arar was being interrogated and had confessed to links with terrorist organizations, alluding to groups based in Pakistan. The Syrians, wrote Pillarella, "promised to pass on to me any information they may gather on Arar's implication in terrorist activities." While Pillarella says the Syrians will allow Arar to have consular visits, nowhere does he note having asked about Arar's treatment or how the confessions were obtained. Instead, on several occasions Pillarella focuses on getting Arar's statements so he can bring them back to Canada and hand them over to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the RCMP. Arar's lawyer, Lorne Waldman, says they were shocked to read Pillarella's memos. "The Canadian officials were extremely eager to obtain the fruits of the torture that was inflicted on Mr. Arar," said Waldman. There's no indication Pillarella knew Arar was being tortured and parts of the memos are blacked out. But Alex Neve, head of Amnesty International in Canada, says Syria might have taken Pillarella's efforts as encouragement. "In those early, very critical days, when Mr. Arar was at the greatest risk - when he was being held incommunicado in detention, when he was being subjected to torture – the ambassador's primary concern seemed to be to do some contract work for Canada's security agencies." The material was also widely distributed to dozens of government officials in Canada, and some of that material ended up being leaked to the media as part of a campaign to discredit Arar, according to his lawyer. But it is possible Arar's deportation could have been thwarted if Canadian officials had acted on the information they had at the time. In a memo written by Canada's consul in New York while Arar was awaiting deportation, Maureen Girvan tells Ottawa that a U.S. immigration officer informally advised her that Arar's case was "of a seriousness that should be taken to the highest level," and suggested Canada's ambassador to Washington contact the U.S. Department of Justice. That contact was never made and within a week Arar had been removed from the United States. "One would have expected that alarm bells would have rang, and that the officials would have taken the action that was suggested. Unfortunately they didn't. And one wonders whether if they would have acted at that time if the deportation might have been prevented," said Waldman. Stephen Bindman, the spokesperson for the governrment's legal team at the Arar inquiry, has a different interpretation of the documents. "Taken as a whole the government believes these documents show the extraordinary lengths to which Foreign Affairs officials, together with other federal departments and agencies, went to provide consular officials to Mr. Arar in New York and Syria." Bindman says the government won't comment on any of the documents except to say Canadians should reserve their judgment. Pillarella, who is now ambassador to Romania, will appear to testify when the inquiry resumes public hearings on May 9.