A Syrian born Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, was detained in 2002 in JFK airport in New York, NY, USA on a connecting flight to Montreal. He was arrested under suspicion of terrorism, interrogated for 11 days by the FBI, then deported to Syria for further “interrogation”. Turns out the Syrians are rather fond of torturing their terror suspects. The FBI, of course, was completely unaware of this. Suuuuuuuuure.
The reason Mr. Arar was detained in New York was that Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had supplied the FBI information that was later found inaccurate.
The Canadian Government has issued a formal apology over its role in Mr. Arar’s detainment and torture and has agreed to pay about $10M in compensation to Mr. Arar as reported by CNews.
Meanwhile the US Government is refusing to apologize or remove Mr. Arar from the terrorism watch list. They refuse to investigate the issue at all.
It seems to be that in the name of the war on terror, the US Government is effectively terrorising innocent people.
How proud must Osama bin Laden be. Mission truly and utterly accomplished.
-TPP
0 Responses to “Once a terrorist suspect, always a terrorist suspect?”