No doubt Stockwell Day will be happy enough not to talk about the case any more. Of course no evidence was ever brought forth to show that the US keeping Arar on the watch list was justified. Day, the Canadian minister in charge of security, also was shown the evidence and it didn't change his mind about Arar being innocent. Day is quite right wing and Pro US so if there were the slightest reason to support the US position he would gladly do so.
Matter of Arar’s place on security watch list 'closed’: U.S. ambassador The Canadian Press
Published: Thursday, March 01, 2007 Article tools
Printer friendly
TORONTO — The U.S. ambassador to Canada says there won’t be another review of Maher Arar’s place on a security watch list for the time being.
David Wilkins says his government completed a review of Arar’s case a few weeks ago and stands by its actions.
He says the matter is now closed.
Arar can’t fly into the United States even though he was exonerated of any terrorist ties by a Canadian inquiry.
He also received $10.5 million in compensation from the federal government and is currently suing U.S. officials.
The engineer was detained by U.S. officials in New York in 2002 and deported to Syria, where he was tortured while imprisoned for 10 months.
© The Canadian Press 2007
Showing posts with label David Wilkins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Wilkins. Show all posts
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Saturday, January 27, 2007
A New York Times report on Arar settlement
You would think that the NEw York Times would at least not get basic details wrong. It sounds as if Arar was just sent from the New YOrk airport to Syria. He was held for days interrogated many times and then tried in an immigration court who found him to be a member of Al Qaeda and then he was flown by the CIA to Jordan and then transported and routinely roughed up on the way to Syria. Syria is mentioned as a place where the rules on torture are more relaxed! That is a nice way of putting it. As Senator Leahy put it the US knew that Arar would be tortured in SYria. By the way Arar was supposed to have legal counsel at the immigration hearing but conveniently the lawyer learned of the hearing only after it was held just as Canadian intelligence authorities found out that Arar was going to Syria only when he was on the plane to Jordan.
Canada apologizes, pays millions to U.S. terror suspect
By IAN AUSTEN
New York Times
OTTAWA — Maher Arar, the Canadian software engineer who was detained by U.S. officials in 2002 and deported to Syria, where he was jailed and regularly tortured, will receive $9.75 million in compensation from the Canadian government, under a settlement announced Friday.
The compensation ends a lawsuit brought by Arar and follows a recommendation from a judicial inquiry that the expulsion to Syria was caused by false assertions by the Canadian police to U.S. officials that Arar was an Islamic extremist linked to al-Qaida.
Arar, traveling on a Canadian passport, was pulled aside by U.S. immigration agents in New York as he changed planes on his way to Ottawa from Tunisia. He was instead flown by private jet to Syria, his birthplace.
The Canadian judicial inquiry cleared Arar of any terrorism connections in 2006, and concluded that anonymous Canadian officials had orchestrated a defamation campaign against him following his return from Syria in October 2003.
As he announced the settlement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a formal apology to Arar, his wife and two children.
"On behalf of the government of Canada, I want to extend a full apology to you and Monia as well as your family for the role played by Canadian officials in the terrible ordeal that you experienced in 2002 and 2003," Harper said in Ottawa.
Arar, whose career was destroyed by the episode and who has suffered emotional problems since returning to Canada, said the government's apology was more important for him than the settlement.
"The government of Canada and the prime minister have acknowledged my innocence," Arar told a separate news conference. "This means the world to me."
"The struggle to clear my name has been long and hard," he said. It has "taught me how important it is to stand up for human rights," he added.
After apologizing, Harper renewed calls for the United States to remove Arar from its terrorist watch list.
"Canada fully understands and appreciates and shares the United States' concerns with regard to security," he said. "However, the Canadian government has every right to go to bat when it believes one of its citizens has been treated unfairly by another government."
Arar's case is an example of "extraordinary rendition," a covert U.S. practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation. Often those countries have more relaxed rules regarding torture.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have told Canadian officials that Arar is still on the watch list because of information about him obtained independently by U.S. authorities.
After reviewing a confidential file on Arar, Stockwell Day, Canada's public safety minister, said that it contains "nothing new" that justifies blocking Arar from entering the U.S.
This week, David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, publicly rebuked Day. "It's a little presumptuous for him to say who the United States can and cannot allow into our country," Wilkins said at a news conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
Canada apologizes, pays millions to U.S. terror suspect
By IAN AUSTEN
New York Times
OTTAWA — Maher Arar, the Canadian software engineer who was detained by U.S. officials in 2002 and deported to Syria, where he was jailed and regularly tortured, will receive $9.75 million in compensation from the Canadian government, under a settlement announced Friday.
The compensation ends a lawsuit brought by Arar and follows a recommendation from a judicial inquiry that the expulsion to Syria was caused by false assertions by the Canadian police to U.S. officials that Arar was an Islamic extremist linked to al-Qaida.
Arar, traveling on a Canadian passport, was pulled aside by U.S. immigration agents in New York as he changed planes on his way to Ottawa from Tunisia. He was instead flown by private jet to Syria, his birthplace.
The Canadian judicial inquiry cleared Arar of any terrorism connections in 2006, and concluded that anonymous Canadian officials had orchestrated a defamation campaign against him following his return from Syria in October 2003.
As he announced the settlement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a formal apology to Arar, his wife and two children.
"On behalf of the government of Canada, I want to extend a full apology to you and Monia as well as your family for the role played by Canadian officials in the terrible ordeal that you experienced in 2002 and 2003," Harper said in Ottawa.
Arar, whose career was destroyed by the episode and who has suffered emotional problems since returning to Canada, said the government's apology was more important for him than the settlement.
"The government of Canada and the prime minister have acknowledged my innocence," Arar told a separate news conference. "This means the world to me."
"The struggle to clear my name has been long and hard," he said. It has "taught me how important it is to stand up for human rights," he added.
After apologizing, Harper renewed calls for the United States to remove Arar from its terrorist watch list.
"Canada fully understands and appreciates and shares the United States' concerns with regard to security," he said. "However, the Canadian government has every right to go to bat when it believes one of its citizens has been treated unfairly by another government."
Arar's case is an example of "extraordinary rendition," a covert U.S. practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation. Often those countries have more relaxed rules regarding torture.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have told Canadian officials that Arar is still on the watch list because of information about him obtained independently by U.S. authorities.
After reviewing a confidential file on Arar, Stockwell Day, Canada's public safety minister, said that it contains "nothing new" that justifies blocking Arar from entering the U.S.
This week, David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, publicly rebuked Day. "It's a little presumptuous for him to say who the United States can and cannot allow into our country," Wilkins said at a news conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
Friday, January 26, 2007
More David Wilkins Dissing
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Biography
Jeremy Kinsman was Canada's ambassador to the European Union from 2002 until his retirement earlier this year. Before that he was high commissioner to London as well as ambassador to Russia and Italy. He joined Canada's foreign service in 1966 and currently resides on Vancouver Island.
KEN's Note:
Another surprisingly tart response to David Wilkins remarks about Day asking for Arar to be taken off the no-fly list. The large award given to Arar contrasts with the treatment Arar continues to suffer at the hands of the US.
I sometimes wonder if all this is not a plot to boost the popularity of Harper and Day both right wing reactionaries and pro-US and in favor of friendlier relations and closer links to US foreign policy--for the most part. Harper has spoken out on the northwest passage as being Canadian waters rather than international.
From one ambassador to another: Mr. Wilkins, cut the bull
Jan. 26, 2007
Cut the bull, Mr. Ambassador. That's how my mother's family in South Texas would react to pompous indignation like that of U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins.
Once again he slammed Canadian efforts to have Maher Arar taken off the U.S. watch list as a suspected terrorist, observing it was "a little presumptuous" of Canada to try to tell the U.S. who it could let into its country.
Wilkins' remarks are especially galling now that the O'Connor inquiry has revealed that "Canadian investigators made extensive efforts to find any information that could implicate Mr. Arar in terrorist activities" and "… found none."
Wilkins impresses no one with his loaded statement that "three U.S. agencies" did a full review of the Arar file and found "their own reasons" to keep the Canadian software engineer on America's watch list.
"Their own reasons," eh? One wonders what those reasons might be.
Scent of McCarthyism
Of course, Wilkins' public statements continue to victimize Arar. But his pain at being on a no-fly list is nothing compared to the pain of being tortured in a Syrian jail for almost a year after U.S. authorities sent him there on October 8, 2002 on a chartered flight paid for by the U.S. Department of Justice.
We all accept that Canadians were in part responsible for that horrible event. The RCMP, sadly, has a long history of making uneducated guesses on international and counter-intelligence files, which is why CSIS was created in 1984.
Still smarting over their lost mandate, it seems, the Mounties again jumped to unwarranted conclusions on Arar, which were conveyed to the U.S.
Though Canadian authorities tried to self-correct, there would be no relenting from a U.S. security machine eager to chalk up political wins, and it would require Canada to negotiate directly with Syria in order to gain Arar's eventual release in 2003.
Ambassador Wilkins suggests that Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and, by extension, Canadians generally are "presumptuous" to question what the U.S. has on Arar.
To some Canadians, this reeks of McCarthyism. Heck, we don't have to go that far back to question the merits of intelligence claims from an outfit that started and entirely screwed up a war on the basis of information from the likes of Ahmad Chalabi, a wealthy Iraqi ex-pat with overblown ambitions. Remember the junk the honourable Colin Powell was made to present the world on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the UN Security Council?
Presuming what exactly
In the innocent days prior to 9/11, one of Paul Martin's memorable lines as finance minister was his sceptical reaction to an appropriations request for a big increase in the Canadian intelligence budget.
At the time, Martin noted that the U.S. spends billions on intelligence and still hasn't a clue, whereas Canada gets the same result for nothing.
Obviously, today we take terrorism more seriously and respect the burden and responsibility of the U.S. But Ambassador Wilkins and his righteous indignation are not helping the cause.
"Presumptuous?" Nous?
Well, I do dare to presume that the damning innuendo on Maher Arar coming from the U.S. ambassador as well as the U.S. attorney general has little to do with intelligence and a lot to do with the fact that Arar has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government.
While Arar is suing for real money — and getting nowhere (the U.S. has invoked the rarely used "states secret" law) — Washington has generously settled some egregious cases of mistaken identity involving U.S. citizens who had been placed on watch lists without justification.
The problem with the Arar suit, however, is that its judicial disposition could constitute a nightmarish precedent of liability for Washington from who knows how many other foreign citizens who have been seized, rendered and imprisoned, including the hundreds held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
A precedent here
The whole episode recalls the ferocious defence that the CIA and U.S. department of justice lawyers mounted in the early 1980s to block a lawsuit on behalf of those elderly Canadians who had suffered from clandestine CIA financing of brainwashing experiments in the 1950's and 60's at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.
Then, the U.S. would not settle any claim higher than a minimal "nuisance" level because of the implications such acceptance of responsibility would have for any other claims from foreigners who could demonstrate harm at the hands of the CIA, from the widow of Chile's Salvador Allende on down.
Then, too, the U.S. claimed there was a counterpart Canadian responsibility, as is the case now with Arar. The Canadian department of justice took a long time to admit responsibility. But eventually there was a deal and a limited form of justice — the Canadian side made an ex gratia payment (without obligation) and the American government followed suit.
Twenty years later, Justice Dennis O'Connor has recommended a similar Canadian payment to Arar. The Canadian government is this time out front in acknowledging what went wrong on our part.
The U.S. admits nothing. For it, the stakes are too high.
It may be reprehensible, but it's an understandable legal defence strategy. Sooner or later, the truth will come out because a Democratic-controlled Congress is going to bring it out and Maher Arar will be compensated.
What isn't acceptable is to be lectured to about "presumption."
So, as one (former) ambassador to another, Mr. Wilkins, give us a break. Cut the bull.
Biography
Jeremy Kinsman was Canada's ambassador to the European Union from 2002 until his retirement earlier this year. Before that he was high commissioner to London as well as ambassador to Russia and Italy. He joined Canada's foreign service in 1966 and currently resides on Vancouver Island.
KEN's Note:
Another surprisingly tart response to David Wilkins remarks about Day asking for Arar to be taken off the no-fly list. The large award given to Arar contrasts with the treatment Arar continues to suffer at the hands of the US.
I sometimes wonder if all this is not a plot to boost the popularity of Harper and Day both right wing reactionaries and pro-US and in favor of friendlier relations and closer links to US foreign policy--for the most part. Harper has spoken out on the northwest passage as being Canadian waters rather than international.
From one ambassador to another: Mr. Wilkins, cut the bull
Jan. 26, 2007
Cut the bull, Mr. Ambassador. That's how my mother's family in South Texas would react to pompous indignation like that of U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins.
Once again he slammed Canadian efforts to have Maher Arar taken off the U.S. watch list as a suspected terrorist, observing it was "a little presumptuous" of Canada to try to tell the U.S. who it could let into its country.
Wilkins' remarks are especially galling now that the O'Connor inquiry has revealed that "Canadian investigators made extensive efforts to find any information that could implicate Mr. Arar in terrorist activities" and "… found none."
Wilkins impresses no one with his loaded statement that "three U.S. agencies" did a full review of the Arar file and found "their own reasons" to keep the Canadian software engineer on America's watch list.
"Their own reasons," eh? One wonders what those reasons might be.
Scent of McCarthyism
Of course, Wilkins' public statements continue to victimize Arar. But his pain at being on a no-fly list is nothing compared to the pain of being tortured in a Syrian jail for almost a year after U.S. authorities sent him there on October 8, 2002 on a chartered flight paid for by the U.S. Department of Justice.
We all accept that Canadians were in part responsible for that horrible event. The RCMP, sadly, has a long history of making uneducated guesses on international and counter-intelligence files, which is why CSIS was created in 1984.
Still smarting over their lost mandate, it seems, the Mounties again jumped to unwarranted conclusions on Arar, which were conveyed to the U.S.
Though Canadian authorities tried to self-correct, there would be no relenting from a U.S. security machine eager to chalk up political wins, and it would require Canada to negotiate directly with Syria in order to gain Arar's eventual release in 2003.
Ambassador Wilkins suggests that Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and, by extension, Canadians generally are "presumptuous" to question what the U.S. has on Arar.
To some Canadians, this reeks of McCarthyism. Heck, we don't have to go that far back to question the merits of intelligence claims from an outfit that started and entirely screwed up a war on the basis of information from the likes of Ahmad Chalabi, a wealthy Iraqi ex-pat with overblown ambitions. Remember the junk the honourable Colin Powell was made to present the world on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the UN Security Council?
Presuming what exactly
In the innocent days prior to 9/11, one of Paul Martin's memorable lines as finance minister was his sceptical reaction to an appropriations request for a big increase in the Canadian intelligence budget.
At the time, Martin noted that the U.S. spends billions on intelligence and still hasn't a clue, whereas Canada gets the same result for nothing.
Obviously, today we take terrorism more seriously and respect the burden and responsibility of the U.S. But Ambassador Wilkins and his righteous indignation are not helping the cause.
"Presumptuous?" Nous?
Well, I do dare to presume that the damning innuendo on Maher Arar coming from the U.S. ambassador as well as the U.S. attorney general has little to do with intelligence and a lot to do with the fact that Arar has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government.
While Arar is suing for real money — and getting nowhere (the U.S. has invoked the rarely used "states secret" law) — Washington has generously settled some egregious cases of mistaken identity involving U.S. citizens who had been placed on watch lists without justification.
The problem with the Arar suit, however, is that its judicial disposition could constitute a nightmarish precedent of liability for Washington from who knows how many other foreign citizens who have been seized, rendered and imprisoned, including the hundreds held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre.
A precedent here
The whole episode recalls the ferocious defence that the CIA and U.S. department of justice lawyers mounted in the early 1980s to block a lawsuit on behalf of those elderly Canadians who had suffered from clandestine CIA financing of brainwashing experiments in the 1950's and 60's at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.
Then, the U.S. would not settle any claim higher than a minimal "nuisance" level because of the implications such acceptance of responsibility would have for any other claims from foreigners who could demonstrate harm at the hands of the CIA, from the widow of Chile's Salvador Allende on down.
Then, too, the U.S. claimed there was a counterpart Canadian responsibility, as is the case now with Arar. The Canadian department of justice took a long time to admit responsibility. But eventually there was a deal and a limited form of justice — the Canadian side made an ex gratia payment (without obligation) and the American government followed suit.
Twenty years later, Justice Dennis O'Connor has recommended a similar Canadian payment to Arar. The Canadian government is this time out front in acknowledging what went wrong on our part.
The U.S. admits nothing. For it, the stakes are too high.
It may be reprehensible, but it's an understandable legal defence strategy. Sooner or later, the truth will come out because a Democratic-controlled Congress is going to bring it out and Maher Arar will be compensated.
What isn't acceptable is to be lectured to about "presumption."
So, as one (former) ambassador to another, Mr. Wilkins, give us a break. Cut the bull.
Dissing David
I just finished watching Maher Arar's reaction to his settlement on CBC TV. He was for the most part calm and very measured in what he said and was reserved in what he had to say about the US--which was not much.
The real bombshell of the interview was when Julian Falconer one of Arar's legal team spoke. He spoke much longer and very eloquently about the case. At one point he really lashed out at the US' keeping Arar on the no-fly list. He spoke of "the meritless ramblings of the US ambassador" a rather surprising choice of words for one of the top lawyers in Canada.
The real bombshell of the interview was when Julian Falconer one of Arar's legal team spoke. He spoke much longer and very eloquently about the case. At one point he really lashed out at the US' keeping Arar on the no-fly list. He spoke of "the meritless ramblings of the US ambassador" a rather surprising choice of words for one of the top lawyers in Canada.
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