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Censored Arar report expected Monday
Norma Greenaway, Times Colonist (Victoria), 17 Sept 06

OTTAWA -- A report on suspected terrorist Maher Arar affair
being released Monday has been subject to some federal censorship in
the name of national security, federal and inquiry commission
officials say. A federal official insists, however, people will be
"very surprised" at how little is blacked out.

Suspense over how much of Arar's story will remain a secret has
been mounting in the run-up to the release of the long-anticipated
report by Justice Dennis O'Connor.

O'Connor and inquiry officials have been engaged in an oft-public
battle with government lawyers over the release of documents related
to the case since the inquiry was launched in mid-2004 at the behest
of Paul Martin's former Liberal government.

Among other things, O'Connor was charged with determining what role
Canadian authorities played in the arrest of Arar, a Syrian-born
Canadian, in New York and his subsequent deportation as a suspected
terrorist to Syria where, he says, he was tortured. Though
commission lawyers say they are satisfied the public will learn most
of what it needs to know from the report, O'Connor has left open the
prospect of taking the government to court to force the release of
information on grounds it is in the public interest.

"There may, at the end of the day, be portions of the report on
which the government asserts a [national security confidentiality]
claim," commission counsel Paul Cavalluzzo said earlier this month.

"But essentially we think that the public will see the essence of
the report, the recommendations and so forth, without redactions."

A Tale of Torture: After his ordeal in 
Syria, Maher Arar hopes probe confirms.
He's no terrorist
James Gordon, Montreal Gazette, 17 Sept 06

Maher Arar appears nervous as he recounts what, for most
people, would be a tedious element of commercial air travel.

It was March 2006.

At a time when most people were dozing off or cracking a book in
preparation for a jaunt across the Atlantic to Belgium, Arar was
watching the screen tracking his aircraft's flight path. According
to the monitor, he was passing over Bangor, Me.

Routine, it would seem, except it's believed that city, almost four
years earlier, was Arar's last North American stop en route to a
Damascus jail cell.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was detained at New York's JFK
airport in September 2002 and accused of having links to Al-Qa'ida.
After a week in detention and a secret court hearing, the dual
national was bundled onto a corporate jet and shipped to Syria for
interrogation.

Arar says he was repeatedly beaten and tortured there, and kept for
months in a "grave-like" cell.

Even though on the 2006 flight he had already become famous and was
flanked by two high-powered lawyers, Arar still expected F-16 Falcon
fighter jets to pull alongside the airliner and escort it down to
American soil.

Now, no flight is routine, and the incident illustrates the kind of
double life Arar says he leads today.

On one hand, he is in his kitchen in a middle-class neighbourhood
in Kamloops, B.C., nestled in one of the most geographically
stunning areas in Canada. His 4-year-old son, Houd, playfully hangs
off his leg while Arar prepares a few cups of instant coffee.

Yet Arar says he is still haunted by the events of 2002, still
unable to overcome the nightmares, paranoia, flashbacks and anxiety.

Tomorrow, the public commission investigating the role of Canadian
officials in Arar's case will file what could be its final report.

In an in-depth interview with CanWest News Service, one of only a
handful he agreed to give in the lead-up to the report's release,
Arar explains it will likely be his last chance to return to a
"normal" life.

"I know that once you are branded with something, as a killer or a
terrorist ... it's going to stay for life," he says, while
expressing hope the findings will somehow decisively remove the
stain of those allegations and give him back "some human dignity."

Although he has always denied all terror ties and has never been
charged with a crime, Arar said he knows some Canadians still
suspect him.

"I don't think it's hard for any Canadian to think this hasn't
affected my life and my reputation. There's always doubt in people's
minds, right? What-if scenarios. Even if it's one per cent," he
says. "My hope at least is for the report to clearly say that Mr.
Arar is not connected in any way, shape or form to terrorism."

He wants that written vindication in his hands.

Planning travel to Ottawa this week, Arar was basing his choices on
which flights have the least probability of crossing into American
airspace. Should he be stopped again, at least he could argue a
government-created inquiry cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Perhaps he could also find work again.

He recounts several instances where he appeared to have landed a
job in his field - wireless systems engineering - in Ottawa, only to
have it fall through when a company or client heard his name and
decided it wanted to "avoid the publicity."

For the time being, Arar has dropped any notion of employment as an
engineer. Kamloops, the small B.C. city where his family quietly
settled in July after his wife, Monia Mazigh, landed a job as a
professor at Thompson Rivers University, isn't a high-tech hub.
Instead, he is enrolled in a PhD program at the University of
Ottawa, where he intends to commute every month or two, with hopes
of one day becoming a professor or researcher.

Despite his repeated assertions his family's privacy is of the
utmost importance to him and that he never wanted to become a public
figure, Arar says he intends, post-inquiry, to remain prominent and
spend a good chunk of his time speaking and teaching about human
rights issues.

"I think (I have) an obligation because my experience opened my
eyes on things I was never aware about," he said. "Many other people
have not been given that opportunity to talk, or are afraid to talk,
and I hope what I'm doing will save lives. That is really my hope,
and this will be my payback."

In addition to clearing his name, Arar said the report - to be
written by inquiry commissioner Justice Dennis R. O'Connor - must
clearly lay out whether Canada's security agencies, the RCMP and
CSIS, were directly or indirectly responsible for his deportation
and detention.

Arar caught the attention of an RCMP anti-terrorism squad dubbed
Project A-O Canada shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. Although reports later revealed the Mounties only
considered Arar a "person of interest" due to his friendship with
the main target of their investigation - Abdullah Almalki - it has
already been determined information about Arar was improperly shared
with the U.S. and wound up in the evidence package used to deport
him.

Yet the extent to which Canadian agencies were working with their
American counterparts remains a mystery. Many of the documents and
testimony about the crucial time period between Arar's arrest and
"extraordinary rendition" were heavily blacked out.

If enough information makes it though government censors in the
report, Arar said, he will appear before inquiry for the first time
to tell his side of the story.

But will there be enough information? Inquiry officials were in an
almost daily fight with government lawyers over what could and
couldn't be made public. It is believed portions of the O'Connor
report will be blacked out and destined for future court battles.

Although Arar says he respects O'Connor's work and expects the
judge will push to release the full story, he accuses the federal
government of holding the judge "hostage" with its constant claims
of national security confidentiality.

If Arar refuses to testify, tomorrow's report will be considered
final.

He insists he remains "eager" to take the stand, despite his
refusal to make a firm commitment to do so.

"I do have a lot of information to offer the commission, to put
things in context and maybe help the public to understand," he says
without elaborating.

Arar maintains he will only discuss the nitty-gritty details of his
case in the inquiry setting.

Many of those days at the inquiry, he admits, were a blur and he
"dived into another world" to cope.

On others, he was filled with anger and frustration as witnesses
dipped and dodged questions tossed at them by inquiry lawyers. On
two occasions, he says, he became so upset the entire left side of
his body became numb.

Of the 85 witnesses who testified, one appears to stand out as
especially troubling to Arar.

Franco Pillarella, the former Canadian ambassador to Syria at the
time of Arar's detention, came under fire after not only casting
doubt on the torture story, but suggesting he had never seen
evidence that Syria had a shoddy human rights record. That was in
spite of many publicly available reports that conclude just that.

"Let me put it that way: For a torture victim, the beginning of
healing starts when people start admitting that he was tortured,"
Arar says, adding copious use by government officials of the word
"mistreatment" in place of "torture" constantly irked him. "What
some witnesses basically said kind of made things worse. I want an
acknowledgment that Mr. Arar was clearly tortured."

An independent fact-finder hired by the commission determined the
torture claims were "highly credible," though O'Connor's conclusion
remains to be seen.

"In Syria, over this long period, they make you doubt yourself over
time ... they keep telling you, 'you're a liar, you're a liar,
you're a liar,'" Arar adds. "So now, for me to come back to Canada
to try to prove I was actually tortured and for some people to
testify to the the opposite or to throw doubt or not use the
appropriate words, it was very painful. Extremely painful."

Yet for all his beefs with the government, with its security
agencies, with its politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats, Arar
says he still loves Canada and what it stands for.

"I don't want my kids to grow up with bitterness in their hearts,"
he says. "Canada is a great country. We've come here to establish a
peaceful life, and I don't want them to think the other way. I want
them to be productive citizens, to grow and study and get an
education and contribute to society.

"I'm doing this for my kids."