Canadian Inquiry Finds Torture Survivor Maher Arar Completely Innocent, Criticizes U.S. For 'Rendition' to Syria

Watch 128k stream       Watch 256k stream

Four years ago this month, a Canadian citizen named Maher Arar was on his way back to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia. The Syrian-born man had a stopover at JFK airport in New York. The date was September 26, 2002. He wouldn't see his family for another 374 days.

After being questioned at the airport, U.S. officials took him to an immigration facility in New York. Two weeks later he was secretly flown to Jordan aboard a Gulfstream Jet. Maher Arar ended up in Syria where he was held in a cell, the size of a grave. He was repeatedly tortured. For weeks his family didn't even know where he was.

On Monday, the Canadian government admitted for the first time that Arar was a completely innocent man. Justice Dennis O'Connor released the findings of a two-year major investigation into the disappearance of Arar. The judge wrote, "I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada."

The official inquiry said that there is no evidence that Canadian officials played a direct role in his detention or deportation. However Justice O'Connor found that the U.S. government's decision to send Arar to Syria was likely based on inaccurate and misleading information provided by Canadian authorities. The judge also criticized the Bush administration's actions. The judge wrote, "They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there."

• Maria LaHood, lawyer for Maher Arar. She is an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Maher Arar's attorney, Maria LaHood, joins us on the phone right now. She's a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights and she is in Canada. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Maria LaHood.

MARIA LAHOOD: Thanks, Amy, for having me on.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. You have spent the last few days with Maher Arar. Can you talk about his reaction to the judge's finding? And clearly lay out what this report says.

MARIA LAHOOD: Maher is really relieved. He’s certainly happy to have his name finally cleared and to try to move on with his life. The inquiry, as you mentioned, it's been a two-year process. You know, the judge, commissioner looked at over 20,000 documents. There were over 70 witnesses. There was in-camera testimony. He looked at all of the national security documents. And he basically found that, as you said, there was no evidence implicating Maher in terrorism. There had been a long investigation by law enforcement agencies here, and it actually even continued after Maher got back from Syria, and the investigation included U.S. cooperation. The justice said, the commissioner said that the U.S. never provided Canada with its own information to support that Maher had al-Qaeda ties and that it likely would have given the close cooperation if it had had it.

So all of this incorrect information, this inflammatory information that Canada provided to the U.S. was what was used in the U.S.'s designation of him as an al-Qaeda member and to send him to Syria to be tortured. Some of that information -- you know, first of all, the RCMP here gave information to the U.S. saying that Maher and his wife Monia were Islamic extremists with al-Qaeda ties. That was just false. Everyone -- I guess every witness that the inquiry interviewed said that that was false and that there was no reason to say that, no basis at all. There was evidence or there was statements given to the U.S. government saying that Maher was in the vicinity of Washington, D.C. on 9/11. That was false. They said that when they requested an interview with Maher, that he refused to be interviewed and suddenly left to Tunisia. That was patently false. So this is the information that the U.S. government used to determine that he was an al-Qaeda member and to send him to Syria to be tortured. And now, this is the information that they claim, I imagine, is a state secret, which prevents him from seeking justice in the United States for what they did to him.

AMY GOODMAN: I first interviewed Maher Arar in 2003. It was November, just a few weeks after he was sent back to Canada from Syria. He described what happened to him there.

MAHER ARAR: Really, I mean, when I arrived there, I just couldn't believe it. I thought first it was a dream. I was crying all the time. I was disoriented. I wished I had something in my hand to kill myself, because I knew I was going to be tortured, and this was my preoccupation. That's all I was thinking about when I was on the plane. And I arrived there. I was crying all the time. So, one of them started questioning me, and the others were taking notes. And the first day it was mainly routine questions, between 8 to 12.

And the second day, that's when the beatings started, because, you know, on the first day they did not find anything strange about what I told them. And they started beating me with a cable, electrical threaded cable, and they would beat me for three, four times. They would stop again, and they would ask questions again, and they always kept telling me, “You are a liar,” and things like that. So, the beating continued for the first two weeks. The most -- the most intensive -- the intensive beating was really the first week, and then after that it was mostly slapping, punching on the face and kicking.