"We're in a different world today than we were then. ... " - A Weeklong Daily Digest of Arar Commission Coverage

Three years in assembly, the Arar Report was released this afternoon. The NSWG is tracking the news coverage and will endeavor to provide a brief digest of some of the more interesting reports and commentary.

The NSWG is also maintaining a mailing list of updates for this week only. If you are interested in joining this list, email mlarsen@yorku.ca

Maher Arar’s long road to learning how and why he became a victim of torture in Syria culminated in an 855-page report (not yet available on the commission website, but promised shortly). In it he received the categorical exoneration he had been hoping for since he was detained by US officials. CTV has video of O’Connor and more coverage.

Early reports suggest, however that not all the expectations of Arar, and his interveners were met. O’Connor sharply criticized the RCMP for negligently sharing information from a database that had not been adequately scrutinized for accuracy and also failing to follow sharing restrictions that would have prevented his rendition.

Specifically, Mr. Arar was placed on a border ‘lookout’ list as early as October 2001 as part of an Islamic Extremist group thought to be linked to Al-Qaeda. O’Connor called this ‘extremely inflammatory’ in the days following September 11^th and judged that the RCMP had ‘no basis’ for this assertion. The CP article reports that while he found that the RCMP did not aid or acquiesce in Arar’s removal, it ‘very likely’ supplied the information on which the US officials based their decision to remove him.

That finding in particular runs contrary to long held suspicions by some interveners in the proceedings including Alex Neve of Amnesty International Canada who were concerned about what they saw as a broader pattern of cooperation between Canadian, American and Syrian agencies to out-source intelligence extraction by torture. Specifically they cite a glaring lack of Syrian interests in the detention of Arar and fellow detainees Abdullah Al-Malki, Amahad El-Maadi and Muayyed Nureddin, and that the nature of the questions they say they were asked could only come from, or have been of interest to, Canadian intelligence officials.

For it’s part, the Toronto Star has reported that the RCMP has been preparing for the decision and is expected to say that the processes and standards have changed greatly since 2001 when Arar’s name was added to the watchlist. In anticipation of the report, federal lawyers announced that they would enter a two-day mediation for compensation in January.