I caught the tail end of the report on “60 Minutes”. It concerned the fate of a canadian citizen (of Syrian birth), who was arrested in the USA, after 9/11.He was interrogated, and charged with being an accessory to terrorists (Al-Queda). Instead of being deportedto Canada, he was deported to SYRIA, where the Syrian intelligence organization worked him over (pretty badly). He claims that he was totured for a year, and then released back to Canada.
Now, I know that “60 Minutes” is not exactly the peakofobjective journalism, but I have a lot of reasons to doubt this guy’s version of events:
-he was in the US illegally
-he would give NO explanation ofhis activities in the USA
-he would notdiscuss his possible ties with several islamic organizations
-finally, why did the Canadian government apparentlt aquiesce to hisdeportation to Syria?
Of course, I don’t understand what WE are doing with the present Syrian regime…officially, it is a sponsor of terrorism.
Anybody know what ACTUALLY happened to thisguy? 
Well, to answer the title of your OP - has he been proven guilty?
No?
Then he’s innocent.
I didn’t catch 60 minutes but wasn’t the guy merely doing a stop-over in the US? So I don’t understand your first two objections. From the 60 minutes site:
Also, I’m not sure he was actually charged with anything.
This is still very much in dispute, CDN gov is denying.
It’s an ugly, ugly story.
He was travelling through New York on his way home to Canada from a vacation. He is a Canadian citizen. You can read the whole tale here.
Canada initially blamed it all on the US, and now the US is saying that Canada somehow knew about the deportation. Chretien (then prime minister) insists he didn’t but there are suspicions that the RCMP (federal police) did. We would all like to know the full story on that but the Attorney General (the former, I think) refused an inquiry, which makes the whole thing stink even more.
I have no reason to doubt his innocence. Since to this day he hasn’t actually been charged with anything, my opinion stands.
So, in answer to your points:
- he was in the US legally
- his explanation for being there was that he was changing planes
- why should he discuss his ties to Islamic organizations? can we capture and interrogate anyone we want, and call them ‘guilty’ if they refuse?
- lots of people are demanding answers re: Canadian complicity in the situation, but I don’t have enough faith in the integrity of the RCMP to believe that they knew what they were doing
Personally, I would say it’s not that important whether he’s guilty; what’s most worrying is that he says he was detained in the USA on a stopover and deported to a country that tortured him. (Though I suppose if he was known with certainty at that time to be guilty of terrorist acts my sympathy for him would be a lot less, but if the rest of his story is true it’s still terrifying, because what if, hypothetically, the next guy in that situation is entirely innocent, no one would know that.)
I’ve never heard anyone arguing convincingly that those parts of his story are likely to be made up, but I admit it’s possible.
How can he be “innocent” or “guilty” if he has never been charged with anything?
Since there wasn’t much coverage of the case in the British media (though he was interviewed on the BBC’s Today Programme after his release), I can’t add anything to the factual details that are available by searching online. However, I can add a very tenuous personal angle.
At the time of his deportation I was working for a company that was closely involved with Mathworks, for whom Arar had worked. Our small US offices regularly liased with them and at least one guy was himself ex-Mathworks. Entirely in the normal everyday course of things, all of them had got to know Arar on his trips to the US. I believe he may even have done a small amount of consultancy work on our behalf. Things had even reached the stage where the possibility of him being hired permanently by us was being discussed. That was abruptly interrupted by his deportation and disappearance.
I’m not in a position to issue a character reference, but the people I know who know him think he’s an on-the-level bloke and trust him.
It really is a small world. Which is reason enough for agencies to do their damnest to avoid wrecking lives by latching onto false positives when it comes to suspect connections.
My question:
Let’s pretend for a second that the guy’s guilty. I don’t believe that, and I’ve seen no evidence credible or otherwise to suggest it. But let’s just make believe.
So, we sent a supposed terrorist off to a state sponsor of terror then? This is our solution to catching terrorists on our soil now is it? What’s next, we catch Osama and pay his fare to Iran? I sure am glad we’re getting ourselves screamed at all over the place about Gitmo then.
Latest news is that Arar is suing the American government – Globe and Mail story here.
And good on him. If that shit hadn’t already gone far enough with Berna Cruz, it would have certainly done so with him.
It scared the shit out of me. If the US immigration authorities won’t respect a Canadian passport with Damascus written in for place of birth, why should they respect one with Saint John, New Brunswick on it?
What pisses me off the most is that faced with the choice of deprting him to Canada or Syria, they chose Syria because they knew that he would be tortured for the imformation they wanted.
Lawyers in his lawsuit said that “Federal officials removed Mr. Arar to Syria under the program precisely because Syria could use methods of interrogation to obtain information from Mr. Arar that would not be legally or morally acceptable in this country or other democracies.”
This guy was a Canadian citizen, and he wasn’t even charged with anything!
Ugly, ugly, ugly. I just hope he sues their asses off for the ten months of torture he suffered
From the Patriot Act;
Etc, etc, etc.
(bolding mine)
Doesn’t the bolded phrase in the quote pretty much say that they can do whatever they want to do?
Peace,
mangeorge
Abso-friggin-lutely. Not to mention that the U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, under which we are supposed not to send even convicted felons back to a country in which they may be tortured. Even under expedited removal, under which people who have not officially passed through immigration inspection and formally admitted to the U.S. can be sent back to where they came from without a formal hearing before a judge, the immigration inspector is supposed to ask the potential deportee whether there is any reason he/she fears being sent back. If the potential deportee says yes, there is supposed to be a formal interview to elicit further detail, called a “credible fear interview.” Decisions to send someone back are also supposed to be reviewed by a supervisor, I believe.
Given that Arar wasn’t convicted of anything, he shouldn’t have been sent anywhere, let alone to Syria, at least not on the basis that the Feds are alleging. Normally the only reason a person would be subjected to expedited removal is if there was evidence that he had committed fraud, such as lying about the purpose of the visit. But given that he was just changing planes, I can’t even conceive of how he ended up being deported; he wouldn’t have had any reason to pass through immigration if he was just waiting for a connecting flight.
The whole thing makes no sense, and I for one would love to see the court transcripts.
As a Canadian citizen, he can legally be in the U.S. without any visa; effectively, if he wasn’t denied entry, then he was legally admitted as a tourist.
From what I have seen and read, Arar was deported to Syria. The Canadian government had brought it up to the United States before he was released, on a couple of occasions. I remember reading about it in the National Post.
Personally, I think that a person should be deported back to the country of his citizenship. By sending him to Syria, the US was essentially skirting around diplomatic convention. It was an attempt to make a person whom they suspected of being a potential terrorist on the sole basis of his nation of birth a villain. IMO, this is a bang on case of the United STates using racial profiling. In addition, they also essentially said to the rest of the world, “We don’t care who you are, or where you come from, we will treat you like we please.”
I only saw the last few minutes of the piece…so I don’t knowmost of the details. However, two things are possible:
(1): Arar was a vitim of mista ken identity, The FBI may have confused him with a known Al-Queda operative. However, the FBI must have contacted the Canadian authorities (the RCMP?); they must have also been mistaken. Since nobody in Chretien’sgovernment will talk about it (including Chretien) the mistaken identity is probably likely.
(2) Arar was actually an intelligence agent, or a double agent. If he were an Al-Quedah operative, the FBI probably wouldhave kept him. The Syrian intelligent agency claims not to have mistreated arar,and he claims the opposite-so it is impossible to confirm this theory.
What isinteresteing:this month a Saudi nationalwas arrested upon his arrivalinthe US (he was found to be carrying 5 small firecrackers in his luggage). He was arrested and charged, then released on $50,000 bail (he’s now back in SA). I expect to see another “60 Minutes” piece bashing the racist American TSA…but this guy could well have been an Al-Quedah test case (seeing if small amounts of explosives could be sneaked past airport inspections).
Anyway, if Arar is innocent, I’m sorry for what happened tohim. However, I think there is a lot more to this story.
You missed:
(3) The US immigration authorities, presumably at the behest of the US Governement, are using racist and illegal methods with no regard for international conventions or basic human rights and are condoning and implicitly encouraging the use of torture by foreign governments.
And I’m not sure what you mean by “if Arar is innocent”. He’s not been proved guilty, no evidence to even charge him with anything, so the presumption is that he is innocent.
For what it’s worth, here’s a copy of Arar’s statement to the media on Nov. 4th. It’s pretty comprehensive, from his perspective. There’s also a much more detailed discussion of the whole case.
And Here’s the Wikipedia page on Arar, which is more neutral and contains links to more supporting material.
I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you right now. I made the mistake of actually reading the link. To all: be forewarned that it describes Arar’s torture in some pretty graphic detail.
What it doesn’t explain, though, is how he ever ended up going through immigration inspection in the first place. If he was just changing planes and didn’t want to leave the international area of the airport, he shouldn’t have needed to.