The next time the Canadian government tells you it has secrets it needs to keep to protect national security, feel free to laugh out loud.
Canada fought long and hard to keep 1,500 supposedly dangerous words out of the 1,400 pages of a judicial report into the disappearance of Maher Arar, a Muslim father of two from Ottawa who fell victim to the West's fight against terrorism. We now know what most of those dangerous words were. Here is one example. It's from the judicial report's Table of Contents: "Application for Telephone Warrant." (Cue the crack of lightning.) Also falling on the censor's cutting stone was the apparently unspeakable phrase "the CIA." As in, "The RCMP had periodic contact with the CIA at this time." Surprise, surprise. When an innocent Canadian Muslim was dispatched to Syria, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was involved.
There were several important details made public yesterday by the order of a Federal Court judge that will add to the sum of Canadians' knowledge about how the fight against terror is being waged in this country. None of these details threaten the security of Canada. We learned that, the day after Mr. Arar disappeared from custody in the United States, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service deduced that he had been "rendered" by the U.S., probably to Jordan, "to have their way with him," because there was not enough evidence to lay charges against him in the U.S. or Canada. (In fact, he was deported via Jordan to Syria, where he was tortured and held in a cell the size of his body for 10 months.) We also learned that, just one month later, the Syrians informed Canada that the Arar matter was "more of a nuisance than anything else." These facts only add to the sense of horror that, as reported by Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor after his 2½-year inquiry, the RCMP and CSIS did what they could to stand in the way of Mr. Arar's release from Syria. Source...
