Thank you Canada, thank you Mr. Stephen Harper. Perhaps you can teach our officials some sense of humility in the face of truth.

On January 26, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr. Stephen Harper took the very courageous decision and personally and formally issued an apology to Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen of Syrian origin for the wrongful imprisoned and torture. Mr. Arar, on a tip from the Royal Canadian Mountain Police was arrested by US authorities on September 26, 2002 while in transit at JFK and sent to Syria, via Jordan to be imprisoned and tortured on terror charges by the very professional and well experienced Syrian secret police. A year of torture that tells the story of Syria’s of the middle ages.
The case of Maher Arar shed a clear and shameful light on the behavior of both the US and Canadian authorities who became and continue to act and behave with contempt and without any due regards to human rights and without due regards to constitutional rights and international treaties. Syria does not give a damn about human rights in the first place.
Maher Arar, a wireless engineer was arrested on very flimsy evidence, perhaps no evidence, on terror related charges. It seems that both the Canadian and US authorities were desperate to file charges against people, who looked like and smelled like Arabs and Muslims. Maher was arrested in New York and was interrogated for over 8 hours and then was shackled and put away at the Metropolitan Detention Center. When asked for a lawyer, a representative of our US Injustice Department told him as Canadian he was not entitled to a lawyer. This story changed when a day later he was taken from his cell at 9 pm to see his lawyer. When he arrived at the meeting room, there were some dozen of terror and security experts , but no lawyer, who made arrangements for Maher to be deported via Jordan to Syria. Maher always insisted on his innocence but US security and terror experts where not interested in the truth nor the facts or evidence. They wanted numbers.
The decision to deport Maher Arar was taken at the highest level of the US Injustice Department by Secretary John Aschcroft, the very devout man with good and true Christian values and his deputy Larry Thompson. Secretary Aschcroft like all senior officers within the Chaney-Bush administration were desperate to show Americans and America that their war on terror was in full swing, to make up for the security screw up that allowed the hijackers to take over several civilian aircrafts killing and murdering over 3000 innocent Americans. Aschcroft declared that Arar was deported to protect America and that he has a right to do so.
Of course unlike the US, Canada seems to behave differently and has not been hijacked by the so-called national security, terror experts and think tanks, decided to open an inquiry into the case and the national commission headed by Dennis O’Connor concluded that Maher Arar was absolutely innocent and cleared him of any and all charges. The US as expected never admitted any wrongdoing and insists that its decision is based on classified information. Of course and unlike the US where officials who screw up in their job never get fired but get promoted and get awarded America’s highest medals like Paul Premer and George Tenet, the chief of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Giuliano Zaccardelli was forced to resign because of his contradictory (lies) testimony to the House of Common Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The Canadian Prime Minister by personally appearing and issuing his public apologies showed that he was not only a statesman, but a man of courage and represents the true democratic and human values that made our friends to the north a model state in North America.
Now to Syria. Every day we hear from the Chaney-Bush administration about how bad Syria is, and that its government supports terrorism and support torture and its kills and murder its citizens. Well, why would a country with such a reputation (it is true) be the choice for the US to subcontract the torture of Maher Arar to? Because, Syria is an excellent model of a criminal state and it is a state that for over 60 years, and especially under the Assad dynasty and the Ba’athis Party have been committing murder left and right and is well known in the Arab world as one of the worst countries, there are several of them, when it comes to torture and human rights abuse. I am sure Syria’s prison walls have tens of thousands of stories to tell about the torture and killing of innocent people, false charged with violating Syria national security.
By selecting Syria as the subcontractor for the torture of Maher Arar, the US could not have done any better. Of course, the US Constitution forbids such torture and to over come this clear constitutional prohibition, US security officials decided to go over seas and seek the truth. Of course the truth was always there, Maher Arar was no terrorist. Thank you Canada and than you Mr. Stephen Harper. Perhaps you can teach some of our officials some sense of humility in the face of truth.