dennis.ca

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was on his way back to Canada in late September of last year. He was held by INS at Kennedy airport, and without any explanation whatsoever, deported to Syria several days later.

No phonecall. No lawyer. No civil rights. In the new world order, you're guilty until proven innocent.

In mid-October Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham finally begins to question the US about their reasoning for deportation. Arar has already been tortured numerous times at this point. I recall thinking at the time that the gentle diplomatic banter wasn't working. Furthermore -- and I may be nutty here -- things only seemed to get rolling when Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, started making the media rounds and asking the government to do something.

Read Arar's media statement here. Be warned -- there are graphic descriptions of torture.

"The past year has been a nightmare, and I have spent the past few weeks at home trying to learn how to live with what happened to me.

I know that the only way I will ever be able to move on in my life and have a future is if I can find out why this happened to me.

I want to know why this happened to me. I believe the only way I can ever know why this happened is to have all the truth come out in a public inquiry.

My priority right now is to clear my name, get to the bottom of the case and make sure this does not happen to any other Canadian citizens in the future.

I believe the best way to go about achieving this goal is to put pressure on the government to call for a public inquiry.

What is at stake here is the future of our country, the interests of Canadian citizens, and most importantly Canada�s international reputation for being a leader in human rights where citizens from different ethnic groups are treated no different than other Canadians."

I must say that I'm slightly befuddled by Chretien's resistance to a public inquiry:

"Prime Minister Jean Chretien says the U.S. government's deportation of a Canadian to Syria was 'unacceptable,' but he is adamant that he will not allow an independent inquiry into the case of Maher Arar."

...You'd almost think something was being sheilded.

I can't resist. One more quote, this time from Tom Ridge:

"First of all, I think we need to dispel the notion that this was an arbitrary decision on the part of our government. There was sufficient information within the international intelligence community about this individual that we felt warranted his deportation back to one of � he had dual citizenship � of one of two countries. The decision was made, based on that information available through the global international intelligence community to effect that outcome."