This is from CBC news. Outside of Canada there seems little coverage of this particularly nasty case of just snatching someone who was changing planes and then no doubt farming him out to Syria to see if they could extract useful info from him by torture. It is ironic that the US authorities would send him to Syria a country the US accuses of supporting terrorism rather than Canada where we are supposedly just a bit sloppy in letting them slip through to the US!
Cheers, Ken Hanly Canadian freed from Syrian jail happy to be home Last Updated Mon, 06 Oct 2003 21:37:24 MONTREAL - Maher Arar's return to Canada is the beginning of his hunt for justice, his wife says. Maher, 33, arrived at Montreal's Dorval Airport Monday afternoon. The Canadian citizen was jailed in Syria, where he was born, for 374 days after U.S immigration officials arrested him in New York and deported him last fall. At a brief new conference at Dorval, Arar talked about his children and "my fellow Canadians who have contributed and helped me get back home." He said he was excited to see his family. "My kids grew up in the last year." FROM OCT. 21, 2002: Missing Ottawa engineer turns up in Syria But his wife, Monia Mazigh, said her husband's "terrible tragedy" isn't over yet. "It's just the beginning of justice for my husband." Maher Arar speaks to the media Arar was first detained by U.S. authorities in September 2002 while he was changing planes in New York. He was travelling from Tunisia to Canada. U.S. authorities said his name was on a terrorist list and they suspected him of being a member of al-Qaeda. After 10 days, they deported him, not to Canada but to to his native Syria. While he has both Syrian and Canadian citizenship, he hasn't lived in Syria for more than 15 years. Arar was jailed upon his return to Syria, but not formally charged. Both Amnesty International and Mazigh had lobbied hard to keep Canadian officials focused on the case. FROM SEPT. 25, 2003: RCMP leaves MPs in dark about Arar case His case has been shrouded in confusion. There have been suggestions he was tortured in Syria, and questions about the RCMP's role, if any, in passing information to U.S. authorities. Arar, a software engineer from Ottawa, appears to be in good health. Written by CBC News Online
