Canadian falsely tortured as extremist

Canadian falsely tortured as extremist, inquiry finds

Flawed data to U.S. authorities cited in report

The Washington Post
Published September 19, 2006


TORONTO -- Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.

The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods.

The inquiry, which focused on the Canadian intelligence services, found that agents who were under pressure to find terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks falsely labeled an Ottawa computer consultant, Maher Arar, as a dangerous radical. They asked U.S. authorities to put him and his wife, a university economist, on a "watch list" for Al Qaeda, without justification, the report said.

Arar was also listed as "an Islamic extremist individual" who was in the Washington area on Sept. 11. The report concluded that he had no involvement in Islamic extremism and was on business in San Diego that day, said the head of the inquiry commission, Ontario Justice Dennis O'Connor.

Arar, 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria.

He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan--where he has never been--and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian commission found.

Arar, who has two children, created an outrage in Canada after he returned in 2003.

O'Connor concluded "categorically there is no evidence" that Arar did anything wrong or was a security threat.