Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Canada to pay $8.9-million to man tortured in Syria

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 27, 2007

TORONTO - The prime minister apologized Friday to a Syrian-born Canadian and said he would be compensated $8.9-million for Ottawa's role in his deportation by U.S. authorities to Damascus, where he was tortured and imprisoned for nearly a year.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper again called on Washington to remove Maher Arar from its no-fly and terrorist watchlists, and said Canada would keep pressing the United States to clear his name.

"On behalf of the government of Canada, I want to extend a full apology to you and Monia as well as your family for the role played by Canadian officials in the terrible ordeal that you experienced in 2002 and 2003," Harper said, referring to Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, and their two children, who now live in British Columbia.

Harper said the compensation package would also pay Arar's estimated $1-million in legal fees.

Arar later thanked the Canadian government.

"The struggle to clear my name has been long and hard; my kids have suffered silently and I feel that I owe them a lot," he said.

Arar's case was an example of rendition, a practice in which the U.S. sends foreign terror suspects to third countries for interrogation. He was exonerated in September after a two-year public inquiry led by Associate Chief Justice of Ontario Dennis O'Connor. It found that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police wrongly labeled Arar as an Islamic fundamentalist and passed inaccurate information to U.S. authorities.

Arar was detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2002 during a stopover on his way home to Canada from a vacation with his family in Tunisia.

He said he was chained and shackled by U.S. authorities for 11 days for interrogation and then flown to Syria, where he was tortured and forced to make false confessions.

[Last modified January 27, 2007, 00:29:08]