Ottawa not liable for Arar torture but $11.5 - million "compensation" paid

[Solly Mack]

U.S. courts have so far dismissed, on national-security grounds, Mr. Arar's suit against the U.S. government.

Canadian officials could not have "reasonably foreseen" that Mr. Arar would be deported to Syria and tortured, the government contended.

At the time, Canadian authorities "had no knowledge" of the U.S. government's practice of "rendering" terrorist suspects to countries where torture is permitted, according to the mediation brief. But that statement has since been contradicted by recently disclosed evidence in the O'Connor inquiry.

According to previously censored evidence released in August, a CSIS officer in Washington noted in a report to superiors that "when the CIA or FBI cannot legally hold a terrorist subject, or wish a target questioned in a firm manner, they have them rendered to countries willing to fulfil that role."

"I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him," Jack Hooper, then deputy director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, added in a memo. Mr. Arar was flown to Jordan before being transferred to Syria.


Background info

Docket: Arar v. Ashcroft

Maher Arar Timeline

Outsourcing Torture

[Lisa]

1. could not have reasonably forseen?

What did they think -- that they would have him over for a nice jolly chat with milk and cookies? Even when I was back in hich school, mainstream Canadians knew that detention in the US was not a good thing. We knew, for example, that things could happen after you had been arrested, and that the authorities would deny all knowledge (and that our own country couldn't or wouldn't intervene). And that was before all this news about "rendition" started to come out.

This makes as much sense as the claims that "nobody could have forseen that the levees would break" in New Orleans. Pretty flimsy cover.

[Solly Mack]

2. I agree with you. It's a bs excuse