Ottawa — A Syrian-born Canadian was returning home Monday to a chorus of questions after spending more than year in a Syrian jail without being charged with any crime.
Maher Arar, 33, was to arrive at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport — formerly Dorval — following his sudden and unexpected release Sunday by Syria.
However, the homecoming celebration is coloured by a fog of uncertainty, and in many quarters outrage, over the circumstances of Mr. Arar's detention and deportation by authorities in the United States on suspicion of terrorist links.
“This is a case of a Canadian citizen whose fundamental rights were egregiously trampled,” Riad Saloojee of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Monday.
Liberal MP Marlene Catterall, who was among the first Canadian officials to meet Mr. Arar in prison after months without Canadian contact, said no evidence of terrorism has been brought to public light.
“If there is evidence, if there are charges to be brought, they should be brought here in Canada where he'll get a fair and open judicial process, be represented properly by legal counsel,” Ms. Catterall told CBC Newsworld. “I agree there are a lot of questions to be answered and a lot of clouds to be cleared up.”
The Arar saga raises profound and troubling questions about the impact of North America's domestic war on terrorism in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
There are lingering suspicions that the RCMP may have been involved in passing along information on Mr. Arar to U.S. authorities. Last month, assistant RCMP commissioner Richard Proulx stonewalled a Commons committee seeking answers.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has hinted as much, but an American embassy official issued a release stating “the U.S. did not consult with any Canadian law enforcement organization” concerning Mr. Arar's detention.
Whether or not the RCMP was consulted, the deportation to Syria appears to be a breathtaking breach of due process.
Mr. Arar has lived almost half his life in Canada, having immigrated in 1988 at age 17.
He holds dual Canadian and Syrian citizenship, but had not visited his birth country since emigrating.
On Sept. 26, 2002, Mr. Arar was returning from a family vacation to Tunisia, a tiny north African country on the Mediterranean between Libya and Algeria. He was flying to Montreal via Zurich and New York, but never made it past Kennedy airport.
Immigration officials in the United States detained him during his New York stopover, contending Mr. Arar had links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network. No charges were laid, but 10 days later Mr. Arar was deported — not to Canada, where his wife and family lived, but to Syria.
Adding insult to injury, Mr. Arar was flown to the Middle East via Montreal, without the Canadian government being notified.
Moreover, he didn't surface in Syria until Oct. 21, having spent two weeks in Jordan while the American, Canadian and Syrian governments said that they did not know his whereabouts.
Mr. Arar's wife and family in Ottawa were frantic.
For the next 374 days, Mr. Arar was held without charge. Syrian authorities said last spring that they had completed an investigation and were prepared to lay charges, but never did so.
Two months ago, a group called the Syrian Human Rights Committee released a report stating that Mr. Arar had been beaten with sticks and cables and tortured with electric shocks while in prison. There has been no confirmation of the abuse to date.
The Arar story has been the subject of intense debate in the House of Commons, where opposition critics have accused the federal government of treading too softly in its defence of Canadians detained abroad.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien had pressed Syria to allow diplomatic access to Mr. Arar, who was last seen by Canadians in April when Ms. Catterall and another MP visited and saw him crying.
Canadian officials said they saw no evidence of physical torture during their visits, which were always closely observed by Syrian guards.
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