The Merged Maher Arar Thread

[Edward Campbell]

Ummm..... at this stage in the game..... SO WHAT ?

Omar Khadr is the one on trial.
The Gov't of Canada has investigated, found that they had erred in their handling of the Arar case & paid a bundle for it.
...

The "so what" is the Mr. Justice O'Connor never heard any evidence from US sources.

According to the Globe and Mail:

Mr. Arar first addressed the Afghanistan question at a Canadian news conference a month after he was released from a year's detention in a Syrian prison. “I have never been to Afghanistan,” he said at the time. “I have never been anywhere near Afghanistan.”

However, within a week, Canadian officials – who were never identified – leaked the confession Mr. Arar gave under torture in Syria, which suggested he attended a training camp for several months in 1993. At that time, Mr. Khadr would have been six or seven years old.

Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor, who headed the Canadian commission that looked at the Arar affair, concluded in 2006 that “there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada.”

The commission completely sidestepped the question of whether Mr. Arar went to Afghanistan, taking the position that it was not relevant to its mandate.

The Globe has previously reported that a former Afghan training camp instructor, Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi, who was arrested in the U.S. in 2004, also told the FBI Mr. Arar had been to Afghanistan.

Justice O'Connor was very narrow in his findings - as he had to be based upon his interpretation of his mandate.

It is very difficult to decide what value ought to be placed on anything Khadr said about pretty much anything and anybody. It may true, or mistaken identity or an attempt at disinformation. I doubt we'll ever know - but I also doubt we'll ever know all of Maher Arar's story either.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Any way you cut it someone's full of BS.  And as Arrar's inquest is completed it's a closec subject.  Khadar's lawyer is just doing his job and muddying the waters.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

So Khadr's own sworn affidavit has Arar at AQ safehouses and training camps, where they both met..........but

Khadr's Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, said that his client, like Arar, has been wrongly accused of terrorist activities.

Guess they were both delivering shawarma take out for the local Tabule Restaurant :

 

[geo]

Justice O'Connor has published his findings & the Canadian government have come to an agreement with Mr Arar, that facet of the docket really doesn't apply anymore - does it ?

I don't have the foggiest idea of the means that were used to interrogate & debrief Omar Khadr... If they were coerced, then anything and everything that is currently documented in the prosecution's file is suspect.  There are enough instances of police investigators asking the same question over & over again, using all sorts of means - going on until they got the answer they were looking for.  There are more than enough convicted criminals being releaased / pardoned for wrongful convictions.

At present Maher Arar is living in beautiful BC and the upcoming trial is about Omar Khadr and only Omar Khadr.  Throwing Maher Arar's name into the soup at this time really doesn't matter anymore... Unless the US is planning to demand the extradition of Maher Arar in order to try him for some sort of offence (after releasing him).

IMHO I believe that the Arar name has been brought up once again because Mr Arar is still trying to get his name off the Terrorist watch list.

 

[PanaEng]

It seems like the actual statement from Khadr was that his picture seemed familiar. That's it.
Also, during the time that he allegedly would have seen Arar, Arar was under surveillance, was employed in Ottawa and did not leave the country.  Additionally, Khadr would have been something like 7 yrs old. Pretty thin evidence.
However, he might have seen a picture of Arar.

cheers,
Frank

 

[McG]

Maher Arar 'shocked' name came up at Gitmo hearing
Updated Thu. Jan. 29 2009 11:10 PM ET
The Canadian Press

TORONTO -- Maher Arar, the Canadian software engineer who was tortured in Syria after he was illegally sent there by the United States, said Thursday he was stunned the Americans had again dragged up his name in connection with terrorism.

Speaking publicly for the first time since he was named at military commission hearings last week in Guantanamo Bay, Arar expressed dismay at what had happened.

"It was shocking," Arar said. "I have to tell you for a week at least I've been in a deep depression. It's not easy."

A special FBI agent testified last week that a teenaged Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr, had seen Arar in an al-Qaida safehouse in Kabul and possibly at a terrorist training camp in the fall of 2001.

Arar, who [claims he] has never been in Afghanistan, also said he had only ever seen Khadr on television.

Khadr's alleged statements to the agent came during the first of a series of FBI interrogations at Bagram, Afghanistan, in October 2002, where the 15-year-old had been taken after his capture by the Americans a few months earlier.

The very next day, Arar who had been arrested two weeks earlier at the airport in New York as he travelled from vacation in Algeria back to Canada, was illegally sent to Syria, where he was horribly mistreated for 10 months.

An exhaustive commission of inquiry in Canada later cleared the married father of two of any links to terrorism. The Canadian government later apologized and paid him $10.5 million in compensation, but the Americans have refused to clear him.

"The Khadr information was part of the inquiry documents," Arar said.

Arar, who is suing U.S. authorities for his "extraordinary rendition" to Syria, said bitterly that he was not particularly surprised the Americans would again try to smear his name.

"It happened many, many times," he said before speaking to a symposium put on by the Canadian Journalism Foundation.

"It will probably continue happening as long as the media is willing to publish those stories."

Arar initially refused to respond to the agent's testimony because he didn't think it warranted a response, saying he and his family has had "enough of this."

He expressed disappointment the Canadian government refused initially to say it had long ago seen the FBI's Khadr information.

Khadr's lawyers said after the evidence the youth had been tortured and would have said anything to his captors in hopes of staving off further mistreatment.

Arar chastized the media for how it covered his ordeal, saying reporters were too willing to rely on information from anonymous government sources and damaging leaks for which no one has been held accountable.

"Most journalists seemed to have assumed I must have done something wrong to deserve my fate," he told the symposium.

Arar compared the agent's testimony to the damaging leaks, which, he said, always happened at critical times.

"Maybe it's (former) president Bush's way of throwing shoes at people," Arar joked.

He also said many journalists are unwilling to own up to their mistakes, which can have devastating consequences for people such as himself.

A free press should be society's watchdog, one that questions government actions, he said, adding journalists should not protect the identities of sources who lie or provide misleading information.

Kerry Pither, who has written a book on Arar's tragic story, chastized journalists for reporting the FBI agent's evidence, saying they did not write enough about why the bureau might have chosen to bring up his name.

"The damage is done," she said, brandishing a newspaper headline reporting the agent's allegation.

However, the CBC's Bill Gillespie explained how Canadian reporters in Guantanamo Bay only reluctantly reported the FBI evidence.

The public would not have been well served if the media had sat on the story, he said.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090129/arar_shocked_090129/20090129?hub=Canada

 

[geo]

While Mr Arar was nabbed in the US and shipped to Syria, based on Cdn provided information, these three fine fellows travelled thru Syria on their own ticket.  What the Syrian Gov't does with their citzens & former citzens who travel thru their sovereign territory should NOT be a concern of the Cdn government.

You should be sorry for having decided to travel back to Syria... which is what got you into trouble in the 1st place.

IMHO

 

[Edward Campbell]

There are still a lot of conflicting opinions about Maher Arar and his odyssey but, no matter what one’s point of view may be, he has endured a lot and, now, he has succeeded mightily. Ottawa U may not be MIT or Cal Tech but it is a very respectable university and a PhD in Electrical Engineering is an indication of brains, ability and hard work. This article is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright act from the Ottawa Citizen:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/That+Arar+from/3116547/story.html

That's Dr. Arar from the U of O
Former torture victim receives PhD

BY SNEH DUGGAL, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN

JUNE 5, 2010

University of Ottawa Chancellor Huguette Labelle, centre, looks on as the university's president and vice-chancellor, Allan Rock, left, congratulates Maher Arar, who received his PhD in electrical engineering from the university during convocation ceremonies Friday at the National Arts Centre.
Photograph by: Julie Oliver, The Ottawa Citizen, The Ottawa Citizen

When Maher Arar walked across the stage at the National Arts Centre on Friday to receive his electrical engineering doctorate from the University of Ottawa, he had a moment of disbelief.

"I can't believe it," Arar said later. "Despite all that has happened, I was able to complete my PhD."

Arar was one of about 300 engineering students who received their degrees during the university's first spring convocation ceremony on Friday morning.

"It's a remarkable day, to see that he has overcome such challenges," said Allan Rock, the university's president and vice-chancellor.

"It speaks so well of him and it speaks so well of Canada," Rock said.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was detained by U.S. officials in 2002 while on his way home to Canada. He was interrogated about alleged al-Qaeda links and transferred to Syria, where he was held for a year and tortured. The Canadian government launched an inquiry in January 2004 into the actions of Canadian officials. He was cleared of all terrorism allegations in 2006.

Arar said studying for his PhD helped divert him from the stress of the inquiry. "There's this kind of magic that when you sit down to do your research, you forget the rest of the world."

He intends to apply for an adjunct professor position at the University of Ottawa.

"I told him I look forward to seeing him on campus and that it'll be great to have him as part of the faculty," Rock said.

During the ceremony, Rock congratulated the graduating engineers and reminded them of their responsibilities. "Your degree is not a passport to privilege," he said, adding it came with duties.

Some of those duties were described by this year's recipient of the faculty's honorary doctorate, Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, who has been at the forefront of computer animation and graphics for the past 30 years.

"The work that she does has laid the groundwork for a lot of the things that are done in the area of virtual reality such as ... the movie Avatar," said Claude Laguë, dean of the engineering faculty.

Magnenat-Thalmann founded MIRALab, named after her dog, Mira, which brings together researchers from fields such as computer science, fashion design, medicine and cognitive science to work in computer graphics, computer animation and creating virtual worlds.

"What is important is not what we learn, but what we discover, to go ahead in knowledge and to contribute to society," she said during her address to the graduating class, adding that Canada helped her achieve many of her goals. A native of Switzerland, Magnenat-Thalmann moved to Canada in 1977 where she worked as a professor and helped discover the world of virtual humans.

"I discovered a land full of opportunities, freedom and thanks to this environment, it was possible for me to go ahead, progress and contribute," she said.

Magnenat-Thalmann said that more significant than receiving the distinction was the happiness of receiving it in Canada, the country she considers her second home.

"Take advantage of this beautiful country that is open to new ideas and go your own way."

… © Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Well done, Dr. Arar.

 

[vonGarvin]

That's good for him.  And I'm certain he has no student loan debts, what with you, me, my neighbours, your neighbours, etc, being oh-so Canadian and paying him oodles of cash.....


(I'm bitter about the payment to him, but I do congratulate him for completing his PhD.  That is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than I have done, or probably will ever do)

 

[The Bread Guy]

In other news....

Today, following the announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it had refused to hear the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) case on behalf of Canadian citizen and rendition victim Maher Arar against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and detained for a year, Mr. Arar made a startling announcement. According to Mr. Arar and his attorneys, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been conducting a criminal investigation into U.S. as well as Syrian officials for their role in his rendition to torture.

To their knowledge, this is the first time the existence of the RCMP’s criminal investigation of U.S officials has been made public. Mr. Arar has met with the RCMP in conjunction with the investigation.

Said CCR Senior Attorney Maria LaHood, “.... the Canadians are doing the right thing by criminally investigating not only Syrian officials, but officials from the U.S. as well. The Obama administration should look to the Canadian example and do what's right - apologize to Maher and hold his torturers accountable.” ....

More on link.

 

[GAP]

Credibility is really being stretched here....if Arar makes enough noise and light, where there is doubt of his guilt, does that mean the next time around the officials won't look so close/not react?

Vindictiveness aside, there seems to be an agenda here....

 

[George Wallace]

Let's not loose too much of that $10 million we hope to gain; get rid of the high priced lawyers:


Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.


Khadr fires American lawyers

07/07/2010 6:41:59 PM
CBC News


LINK

Omar Khadr has fired his American lawyers less than a week before his military commission pre-trial hearings are slated to resume in Guantanamo Bay, one of his attorneys said Wednesday.

Khadr, via a motion terminating his U.S. counsel and filed by his lawyers with the commission, said that he would either represent himself or boycott his trial.

"We have worked our hearts out on the case and were just eagerly looking forward to what we had planned to do," one of the lawyers, Barry Coburn, told The Canadian Press.

"We're just kind of consumed with grief at the notion that we won't be able to do that."

Coburn, who said he was "totally devastated" by Khadr's decision, refused to say what may have motivated his Canadian client, citing solicitor-client privilege.

However, speaking from Baltimore after a flight from Guantanamo Bay, Coburn said he hoped Khadr would relent.

"As of right now, there is no indication of that."

Army Col. Patrick Parrish, the military judge presiding over Khadr's case, will have to rule on the motion axing the lawyers after a hearing on Monday.

The Toronto-born Khadr, 23, is accused of five charges, the most serious of them being the murder of an American special forces soldier.

Prosecutors allege Khadr threw a hand grenade that killed Sgt. Chris Speer in Afghanistan in July 2002 when he was 15 years old. He faces a maximum life sentence on conviction.

His trial is slated to start in August. It was not immediately clear what impact the firing of the lawyers would have on the timing.

Khadr is also represented in the United States by Kobie Flowers and Pentagon-appointed lawyer Jon Jackson.

Flowers refused comment, citing his "ongoing duty of loyalty" to his client.

However, one of Khadr's Canadian lawyers, Nate Whitling, said from Edmonton that Khadr had "simply lost hope" in any prospect of a fair trial in Guantanamo.

"He sees little point in participating in a prosecution which appears will be conducted on the basis of statements extracted from him while he was being threatened, abused and tortured," Whitling said.

Pre-trial hearings were to resume next week, after a recess to allow the prosecution to conduct its own assessment of Khadr's mental state.

His lawyers have previously pressed to have self-incriminating statements and other evidence thrown out on the basis it was obtained through torture after the badly wounded Khadr was captured.

Khadr was taken to Guantanamo Bay in October 2002 and is the lone Westerner and youngest inmate at the U.S. prison.

 

[The Bread Guy]

In other news....

Today, following the announcement by the U.S. Supreme Court that it had refused to hear the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) case on behalf of Canadian citizen and rendition victim Maher Arar against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and detained for a year, Mr. Arar made a startling announcement. According to Mr. Arar and his attorneys, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been conducting a criminal investigation into U.S. as well as Syrian officials for their role in his rendition to torture ....

Bumped with the latest ....

The RCMP is laying a torture charge against a former Syrian military intelligence officer for alleged involvement in the brutal treatment of Ottawa telecommunications engineer Maher Arar.

An RCMP document filed in court Tuesday charges Col. George Salloum with torture under the Criminal Code.

While the colonel's whereabouts are unknown, the development represents the culmination of a lengthy RCMP investigation.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was detained in New York in September 2002 and soon after deported by U.S. authorities — winding up in a grave-like cell in Damascus.

Under torture, Arar gave false confessions to Syrian military intelligence officers about supposed collaboration with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

A federal commission of inquiry led by Justice Dennis O’Connor concluded that faulty information the RCMP passed to the United States very likely led to Arar's year-long ordeal.

Arar's lawyer Paul Champ, his wife Monia Mazigh, and Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, appeared at a news conference Tuesday to announce the RCMP's move.

Mazigh read a statement from her husband welcoming the criminal charge. Arar said he had been co-operating with the Mounties since laying a complaint in 2005.

Champ said Arar provided "lengthy and candid" interviews to the RCMP, responded to many requests for information, reviewed photos, suggested contacts and handed over documentation.

Neve said the charge — the first Canadian one for torture abroad — sends a strong message that those who commit "their terrible abuses in faraway prison cells" may find themselves judged in court ....

More from Amnesty International here, and the CCC section on torture here.

 

[Teager]

A federal commission of inquiry led by Justice Dennis O’Connor concluded that faulty information the RCMP passed to the United States very likely led to Arar's year-long ordeal.

So this would never have happened if the RCMP didn't have faulty info?