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Sorry, No Terrorists Here
Canada’s Solicitor-General would not discount the possibility yesterday that rogue elements in the RCMP passed on intelligence information to U.S. authorities leading to the arrest and deportation of an Arab-Canadian to Syria over allegations of links to al-Qaeda. Wayne Easter said he is aware the Americans are claiming the RCMP quietly asked the U.S. government to pick up Maher Arar, whom Paul Cellucci, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, says was the target of a joint Canada-U.S. security investigation long before he was arrested in New York last September.

Mr. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was arrested when he arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport en route to Canada. The 32-year-old Ottawa engineer was carrying a Canadian passport when he was detained and then sent to a CIA debriefing station in Jordan before ending up in a Damascus prison. He is being held in a secret location and denied access to his family and legal counsel. Mr. Easter said senior Mounties insist there was no "official" decision to provide the United States with information that led to Mr. Arar being placed on a watch list used to screen passengers arriving in that country. "The Americans had indicated that it was RCMP and it was the RCMP who indicated to me that there was no official discussions," he said.

However, Mr. Easter did not rule out the possibility RCMP officers working the Arar case alerted U.S. law enforcement without the official approval of their superiors at RCMP headquarters. "I would hope that when an American authority is dealing with Canada that they only do it on the basis on official clearance," he said. "You could have a number of individuals claiming to speak on behalf of an agency and that is certainly not what we want, so the information that I have been provided with is that there was no official clearance or discussion on that issue with American authorities."

"It is a serious matter and that is why the Prime Minister is taking on this case with his profile," Mr. Easter said. "He certainly speaks for the government and what we want to do is ensure that there is due process of the law for a Canadian citizen." Asked whether the Canadian Security Intelligence Service provided information on Mr. Arar to the United States, Mr. Easter said: "I can’t get into talking what CSIS did or didn’t on that particular matter."

U.S. authorities indicated yesterday an RCMP team in charge of the Arar investigation co-operated with the United States to ensure Mr. Arar did not return to Canada. "There is a real disconnect between the Mounties on the street doing the investigations and sometimes the people at the top in terms of acknowledging the problem in Canada with sleeper cells," a U.S. official said. "From the American perspective, the RCMP is much better to work with than CSIS because CSIS is a political creature. The RCMP are cops doing their jobs. They are the guys who do the surveillance. They know the score."

In April, Mr. Cellucci told a private audience Mr. Arar was well known to Canadian law enforcement agencies and "they wouldn’t be happy to see him come back to Canada." Mr. Easter did not discount Mr. Cellucci’s statement but said the situation has changed now that the Prime Minister has intervened to win Mr. Arar’s release. Mr. Chrétien sent a personal envoy with a letter to Bashar Assad, the Syrian President, last week asking that Mr. Arar either be charged and given legal counsel or freed and allowed to return to Canada. "The fact of the matter is that whether we did or whether we didn’t [want him back], we have a responsibility to a Canadian citizen and the Prime Minister is exercising that responsibility to a Canadian citizen and to a Canadian citizen’s family by doing what he is doing," Mr. Easter said. "He is pushing the case to ensure that Arar has the due process of law by Canadian standards."

Syria has not responded to the Prime Minister’s letter and has yet to lay terrorism-related charges against Mr. Arar, despite promising to do so in April when Canadian officials last saw Mr. Arar in prison. Mr. Chrétien has also written to Mr. Arar’s wife, Monia Mazigh, promising to fight for his repatriation to Canada. Ms. Mazigh denies her husband has ties to al-Qaeda or any terrorist group. She has expressed concern that Canadian law enforcement agencies abused her husband’s civil rights, although she has not yet filed a protest with the agencies that act as the public watchdog for the RCMP and CSIS.
Posted by: john 2003-07-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=17097