Canada to Pay $9.75
Million to
Man Tortured in Syria
By IAN AUSTEN,
NYTimes on the Web, January 27, 2007
OTTAWA, Jan. 26 -- Maher Arar,
the Canadian software engineer who was detained by American officials in 2002
and deported to Syria, where he was jailed and regularly tortured, will receive
11.5 million Canadian dollars ($9.75 million) in compensation from the Canadian
government, under a settlement announced Friday.
The compensation ends a lawsuit brought by Mr. Arar and follows a recommendation
from a judicial inquiry into his case. That inquiry said the expulsion to
Syria was caused by false assertions made by the Canadian police to United
States officials, saying that Mr. Arar was an Islamic extremist linked to Al
Qaeda.
Mr. Arar, traveling on a Canadian passport, was pulled aside by immigration
agents in New York as he changed planes on his way home to Ottawa from Tunisia.
He was instead flown to Syria, his birthplace.
The Canadian judicial inquiry cleared Mr. Arar of any terrorism connections in
September 2006, and concluded that anonymous Canadian officials had orchestrated
a defamation campaign against him after his return from Syria in October 2003.
As he announced the settlement on Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered
a formal apology to Mr. Arar and his family for their “terrible ordeal.”
Mr. Arar, whose career was destroyed by the episode and who has suffered
emotional problems since returning to Canada, said the government’s apology was
more important for him than the financial settlement.
“The government of Canada and the prime minister have acknowledged my
innocence,” Mr. Arar told a news conference. “This means the world to me.”
After apologizing, Mr. Harper renewed calls for the United States to remove Mr.
Arar from its terrorist watch list. “Canada fully understands and
appreciates and shares the United States’ concerns with regard to security,” he
said. “However, the Canadian government has every right to go to bat when
it believes one of its citizens has been treated unfairly by another
government.”
The case has strained the otherwise cordial relationship between Mr. Harper’s
Conservative government and the Bush administration.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Michael Chertoff, the homeland security
secretary, have told Canadian officials that Mr. Arar is still on the watch list
because of independent information about him obtained independently by law
enforcement agencies in the United States.
After reviewing a confidential file concerning Mr. Arar, however, Stockwell Day,
Canada’s public safety minister, said that it contained “nothing new” that
justified blocking Mr. Arar from entering the United States.
This week, David H. Wilkins, the United States ambassador to Canada, publicly
rebuked Mr. Day. “It’s a little presumptuous for him to say who the United
States can and cannot allow into our country,” Mr. Wilkins said at a news
conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
Mr. Arar has been unemployed since his ordeal in Syria, where he had been held
for 10 months in a 3-by-6-foot cell and beaten repeatedly, often with a frayed
electrical cable.
According to Mr. Harper, the settlement amount was based on an estimate of what
a court would award Mr. Arar, and includes about $850,000 for legal costs.
Mr. Arar said: “I wish money could buy my life back. That’s my
biggest wish.”
He has also sued American officials and agencies. A United States District
Court judge in Brooklyn dismissed the suit last February, largely on
jurisdictional grounds, but the decision is being appealed.
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