Reuters: US to review why Canada's Arar still on watch list

[Eugene]

US to review why Canada's Arar still on watch list
21 Dec 2006 23:30:06 GMT
Source: Reuters

-snip-

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it would review
why a Syrian-born Canadian citizen remains on a U.S. security watch list despite
having been cleared by a Canadian investigation.

Maher Arar, a 36-year-old software engineer, was arrested by U.S. agents in 2002
during a stopover in New York on his way home to Canada from a holiday. He was
deported to Syria, where he says he was jailed and tortured before his release
in 2003.

-snip-

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff had told her he would "personally review" the case, which has been a source
of irritation in an otherwise close U.S.-Canada relationship.

"But I think you do have to understand that the United States has to follow its own
processes and has to come to its own conclusion and to its own satisfaction about the
nature of these cases," Rice told reporters after meeting Canadian Foreign Minister
Peter MacKay.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N21232438.htm

[TexasLawyer]

1. That poor man has been through the wringer

Not only should Mr. Arar be immediately removed from the watch list, but he should be financially compensated for his months of torture by America and its proxies.

Not that any of that would make things 100% right, but it would be a start.

If he is left on the watch list, it is an admission by the US government that capture and torture turns innocents into potential enemies of the state.

[Posteritatis]

2. Oh, the magnamity! (/Hindenburg guy) (/sarcasm) (nt)