Maher Arar: The Torture ContinuesSNIP
Maher Arar is the Canadian citizen who, based on what a Canadian judge found to be unsubstantiated accusations that he was a terrorist, was detained in New York City by the U.S. government and then renditioned to Syria in 2002, where he says he was tortured for 10 months. He was finally released and was allowed to return to Canada, where a commission that examined the conditions under which he was detained concluded that “there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada.”
Even so, the U.S. government kept Arar from appearing Wednesday at the 30th annual Letelier-Moffitt Awards ceremony, sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, where he and the organization that fought for his freedom, the Center for Constitutional Rights, were given the IPS International Award.
John Cavanagh, the director of the Institute for Policy Studies, said at the ceremony at the National Press Club that he wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asking him to intervene to allow Arar into the country, and got no response.
I did not fare much better when I called a Justice Department press spokesman Thursday, who referred the question to the Department of Homeland Security. “They handle the borders,” said spokesman Charles Miller.
As of this writing, there was no response to my queries placed at the Department of Homeland Security. The Canadian Press news service was also unable to get substantive replies to questions about Arar. The Associated Press reports that Arar remains on a terrorist watch list. But the Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar formed by the Canadian government concluded that despite “extensive efforts to find any information that could implicate Mr. Arar in terrorist activities. … they found none.”
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/19/maher_arar_the_torture_continues.php