REPORTER: Bronwyn Adcock
For Canadian Maher Arar, even playing in a local park with his two children can't erase the memories of the past.
MAHER ARAR: I can still hear the screams of people who were being tortured in Syria. I can still hear it in my ears.
He spent 10 months last year in a Syrian jail where he too was tortured.
MAHER ARAR: I guess I am fortunate because I could talk about my experience, what about them?
REPORTER: Do you think about that often?
MAHER ARAR: Yes. Yes, I feel guilty if I don't speak about it.
It was late last year that a fragile Maher Arar returned home from Syria. Syria is a known abuser of human rights and certainly not a close ally of America. However, it was the Americans who sent him there. He'd been subject to one of the most secretive practices used by the United States in its war on terror. It's called rendition, when a suspect is picked up and without any legal process rendered to another country.
MAHER ARAR: My kids grew up in the past year and I would like to thank my fellow Canadians who have contributed...
His lawyers are now suing the US Government. They say America rendered him to Syria with the full knowledge he'd be tortured.
STEVEN MACPHERSON WATT, LAWYER FOR MAHER ARAR, UNITED STATES: United States had every reason to suspect it would happen and actually our lawsuit goes further. It says that was their intention. Maher was rendered to Syria by the United States for the express purpose of interrogation under torture.
The extraordinary story of Maher Arar began in the northern summer of 2002. The IT specialist was on holiday with his family in Tunisia. He left early to fly back home to Canada. His flight went through JFK airport in New York. While in transit, he was pulled aside by airport police.
MAHER ARAR: I was first surprised because you know I had worked in the States before and I travelled back and forth many times without a problem. But I thought that it was a routine thing at the beginning frankly.
It quickly became non-routine when the FBI turned up. For the next two days at the airport, he was interrogated and allowed little sleep.
MAHER ARAR: I said, "I need a lawyer." And they said, "You're not an American citizen so you're not entitled to a lawyer." And I asked them to make a phone call. They didn't, they just ignored my request.
At the end of the second day, Arar was taken here, to a detention centre in Brooklyn. He was finally told why he was being held. Authorities believed he was a member of al-Qa'ida.
MAHER ARAR: And I was very devastated to learn that and - I mean, they did not mention any specific reason. They just said, "In that document based on classified information we have, we believe that you are a member of al-Qa'ida."
It soon became clear that his captors were planning to send him to Syria. Arar was born in Syria, but only spent his childhood there. He left when he was 17, and never returned. He is now a Canadian citizen.
MAHER ARAR: During the 6-hour exhaustive interview two days before they deported me, they kept asking me about why I don't want to go back to Syria. And I explained to them why. You know, I said I was going to be tortured and I had not done my military service and my mother's cousin was accused of being a member of the Muslim brotherhood and he was put in prison for nine years. So I gave them many reasons but they didn't seem to care about those reasons. I told them, I said, "Listen, you're going to send me to a country that you know has no law, they don't follow the law. If you send me there I'm going to be tortured." So I raised the torture issue many times.
Despite this, early in the morning on the 13th day of his detention, without any type of legal hearing at all, he was shackled and driven to a private airport somewhere in New Jersey. He was put on a small luxury jet, most likely a Gulfstream. On the plane, Arar was accompanied by a team of men in suits.
REPORTER: Who were the people who boarded the plane? Who did they work for?
MAHER ARAR: I don't remember. They had badges. They did not specify. I know there are some newspaper articles that they mention it's CIA but I can't confirm or deny they were CIA. But I can confirm they were called the Special Removal Unit.
REPORTER: How do you know that?
MAHER ARAR: I overheard them talking on the phone.
REPORTER: And they were calling themselves the Special Removal Unit?
MAHER ARAR: Yes. You have to understand the situation I was in. I was very desperate. I was disorientated. It was sometimes it was like a dream.
It must have been a surreal experience. As the plane headed towards the Middle East, a meal was served and his captors settled in to watch a series of action movies.
MAHER ARAR: They asked me "Do you mind watching the movie?" I said, "No," but I was looking at the screen but my mind was thinking about what I'm going to do once I arrive in Syria, how am I going to face torture because I realised at that point they were sending me there to extract information, it was so clear.
Once the plane landed, Arar never saw his American captors again.
MAHER ARAR: The first thing I thought about when I arrived in Syria, when they took me to the room alone, the first thing that came to my mind is suicide. I said "If I had knife in my hand, I would have killed myself."
REPORTER: Was that because of the fear of what might happen to you?
MAHER ARAR: Of course. That was the feeling for me. I didn't know. I was crying all the time. I didn't know what was happening. I couldn't believe what was happening.
In a Syrian military intelligence jail, Arar was locked up in a narrow underground cell with no light. Beatings with a shredded black electrical cable 5cm wide soon began.
MAHER ARAR: The second day, they started beating me. The third day, that was, if I remember, that was the most intensive day of all. It was about 18 hours.
REPORTER: 18 hours of interrogation?
MAHER ARAR: Of interrogation. In between the interrogation sessions they would put me in a room again for like an hour to hear other people being tortured.
REPORTER: So what could you hear?
MAHER ARAR: All kinds of voices - of people being tortured. Most of those people they used to cry say " Allah, Allah" seeking the help of God. It was very awful. One of the noises I heard was an interrogator apparently was hitting someone's head on the metallic desk in that room. Bang, bang, bang like that. That was very, very painful psychological torture because I used to say to myself "My god, I'm going to say anything just to stop torture." They would basically put me back to the interrogation room and they would beat me again like three or four times with the cable and now they started beating me on my shoulder, on my back, on my hips. They would ask questions again. Sometimes they would beat first and then ask second and if you hesitated - if I hesitated to answer they would. I remember some time before the end of that day, they basically wanted me to say that I had been to Afghanistan. I said, "Yes, I have been to Afghanistan." Just to stop the torture.
REPORTER: Was that true? Have you been to Afghanistan?
MAHER ARAR: No, I have not been to Afghanistan.
To flesh out his confession Arar was asked which al-Qa'ida camp he trained in. He didn't know the name of any so he was given a list to choose from, which he did.
MAHER ARAR: Let me tell you something that happened during the interrogation. I urinated on myself twice during the interrogation. I don't know what that shows but my nerves, like, I can't control myself. It's so scary when you hear people being tortured. It's so scary when you are beaten. I would just say anything, anything they want, just to stop the torture.
Back home in Canada, Arar's wife Monia Mazigh spent the first few weeks trying to establish exactly where her husband had been taken.
MONIA MAZIGH: At the beginning I was very kind of naive. I thought that my husband would be back very soon and then more and more I realised that it's not the case. It's not as direct and as simple as I thought to be.
Monia Mazigh began campaigning to have her husband released. Initially, there was little public sympathy.
CURT PETROVICH, JOURNALIST CBC: A number of people were ready to assume that since he'd been arrested by the United States under some sort of unspecified security risk that he must be guilty of something.
A few months into his detention Monia's campaign turned around when reports of her husband's torture were made in the Canadian press.
CURT PETROVICH: And I think at that point people started to take an interest, people started to listen more to Monia Mazigh and it was around that time that Canadian officials themselves began working a little harder, I think, to get access to Maher Arar.
Maher Arar was finally released and returned to Canada 10 months after his arrest. By then his case had become a huge media story. After spending several weeks recovering physically from his experience, Arar made the decision to tell his story in a press conference.
MAHER ARAR: I had few hours to wait until my connecting flight to Montreal. This is when ... this is when my nightmare began.
For nearly an hour, Arar described in minute detail what happened to him. So compelling was his story, TV stations disrupted normal programing to play it in full.
MAHER ARAR: What I went through was beyond human imagination. I know the only way I will ever be able to move on in my life and have a future is if I can find out why this happened to me. I want to know why this happened to me. My priority right now is to clear my name, get to the bottom of the case and make sure this does not happen to any other Canadians in the future.
The government of the United States doesn't deny it sent Maher Arar to Syria. It says it did so because it had evidence suggesting a terrorist link. Arar's Canadian lawyer says this doesn't justify his rendition.
LORNE WALDMAN, LAWYER FOR MAHER ARAR, CANADA: Regardless of what evidence they had against Mr Arar, what happened to Mr Arar is totally unacceptable. I mean, the fact that he was a Canadian citizen detained in the United States, and was sent by Americans to Syria to be tortured in order to extract information is deeply distressing.
The United States Administration doesn't like talking publicly about the practice of rendition. Most of what's known comes from journalists like the 'Washington Post''s Dana Priest. She's spoken off the record with serving and former administration officials directly involved in the practice.
DANA PRIEST, WASHINGTON POST: Well, one of the people we interviewed said, "We don't kick the shit out of them. We have someone else do that."
According to the Post's sources it's generally low level suspects who are rendered and the purpose is either to get them off the streets or to get them to talk.
DANA PRIEST: So one of the reasons that they render people to other countries is because those other countries can be more aggressive with them.
It's unknown exactly how many people have been rendered during the war on terror but estimates run in the hundreds. Countries used include Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. Maher Arar is one of few to return. Australian Mamdouh Habib is another case. Habib was rendered to an Egyptian prison by the United States. He was there for around six months and was allegedly severely tortured. He was then sent to Guantanamo Bay. To knowingly send someone to a country where they'll be tortured is a breach of international and US domestic law. According to Dana Priest, lawyers in the CIA, the Justice Department and the White House have developed a strategy to try and get around this.
DANA PRIEST: The understanding is - the process is that you have to get the country that you're about to render somebody to, to verbally say or sign a paper - I think it is verbal, that they pledge not to abuse the person and once they have obtained that, I think that is done overseas by the CIA station chief, once they obtain that assurance, they then cable that back to Washington and that is their legal safeguard that makes this permissible.
REPORTER: So it's essentially just creating a degree of deniability?
DANA PRIEST: Absolutely. It is. It's creating a degree of deniability and there's a paper trail so that if it ever came up, they would be able to say "Well, we got promises from country X that they would not abuse this person and we have good relations with them and so we take their word."
In the case of Maher Arar, it's been revealed that the US did seek an assurance from Syria that he would not be maltreated.
STEVEN MACPHERSON WATT: That was an assurance from a country which the United States documents practises torture. It's also a country that there are seven countries that the United States recognises as state sponsors of terrorism and Syria's one of them. So how can you accept assurances from a country with that sort of a background. I mean that's a complete nonsense.
LORNE WALDMAN: To suggest in the face of what we now know about rendition that the Americans had any other intent other than to send Mr Arar to Syria to be subjected to interrogations and torture in order to extract information from him is completely naive. That is clearly what they were wanting to do because there is no other reason. Why would the Americans not respect his Canadian passport when he clearly stated he wanted to go back to Canada and he travelled on a Canadian passport. He didn't even have a valid Syrian passport, he hasn't been to Syria in years and had no connection to Syria. To suggest there was any motivation other than to send him to be tortured is absurd in my view.
Maher Arar has always maintained his complete innocence of any terrorist related activity. From the moment he returned to Canada he pressed for a public inquiry. He doesn't just blame the American government for what happened to him, he believes his own government was complicit.
MAHER ARAR: What we know now is they exchanged information with the United States. They used to actually neither confirm nor deny but now it's confirmed that they exchanged information with the United States at least during the time that I was detained there. We know they had meetings with the Syrian military intelligence. We know there was communication between Syria and Canada during the time I was detained there.
Arar's return to Canada sparked a heated debate in the Canadian parliament. The Opposition demanded to know what role Canadian officials had in the arrest and deportation of Maher Arar.
BILL BLAIKIE, CANADIAN PARLIAMENT: There is a Canadian role in this. Will the Prime Minister call a public inquiry so we can know what they did or did not do in order to prevent Mr Maher Arar from becoming the object of this so-called rendition, or as I called it yesterday, contracting out of torture. Shame on Canada.
The Government though put the blame squarely at the feet of the Americans.
JEAN CHRETIEN, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: It's just another fishing expedition. The people who are responsible for the deportation of this gentleman to Syria is the Government of the United States, not the Government of Canada. And I cannot understand the Opposition want to blame the Government of Canada for the actions of the Americans. This gentleman should have come to Canada, not to be sent to Syria, Mr Speaker.
According to journalist Curt Petrovich who covered the story intensively, it soon became clear that Canadian police and intelligence had at least some level of involvement in Arar's case.
CURT PETROVICH: It was becoming increasingly clear as some of the information was starting to leak out that Canadian agencies may have delivered some information to US authorities, that then enabled them to arrest Arar and send him to Syria and that while in Syria Mr Arar may have been interrogated using Canadian information. It started to look really, really bad.
Arar's lawyers think that he came on to the Canadian intelligence radar when he had lunch back in 2001 with a man who was under surveillance. They think that this, plus another casual relationship Arar had with someone under suspicion, was enough for his name to end up on a terrorist watch list. Then, when the Arar family went on holiday to Tunisia, the Canadian police, the RCMP, mistakenly thought Arar was fleeing Canada for good, so they notified the Americans.
LORNE WALDMAN: And we think that that's when they panicked. The RCMP probably at some point sent his details to the United States because Mr Arar entered the US several times in 2002 without incident and he went to Tunisia at the end of June, beginning of July 2002 and when he came back to Tunisia after his summer vacation at the end of the September, that's when he was arrested, detained and sent to Syria.
In a country proud of its democratic traditions and respect for human rights, the Maher Arar case was creating shockwaves. In the middle of this growing debate in Canada, an extraordinary article appeared in the 'Ottawa Citizen'. It claimed to have access to Maher Arar's intelligence file with apparently damning evidence documenting his training with al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan. However Maher Arar recognised much of the information in the article as being precisely what he had falsely said in Syria under torture.
LORNE WALDMAN: We don't know of any other sources of information about Mr Arar being in Afghanistan other than that. And we also know, because we were told, that the intelligence agencies were in Syria shortly after he was arrested and we know from the Syrian ambassador that his entire file was given to Canada.
The leak to the newspaper was seen as an attempt to smear his name and as yet another example of Canadian complicity in his ordeal. There was also a growing belief that the evidence against Maher Arar was decidedly shaky.
LORNE WALDMAN: Based upon what I've seen, absolutely nothing. Based upon erroneous inferences and assumptions that proved ultimately to be incorrect. Now obviously I don't have access to all of the secret evidence and we don't know what there is, but I would expect that by now the government has taken its best shot. I mean they leaked allegedly his entire file to the 'Ottawa Citizen' reporter Julie O'Neil and she wrote an article disclosing what was in the file. And what we saw was nothing new and different from what we already knew.
Finally at the beginning of this year, the government relented to media pressure and announced a public inquiry.
ANNE McLELLAN, MINISTER FOR PUBLIC SAFTY: I felt it was now the appropriate time to begin a public inquiry, to get to the bottom of this.
The inquiry is specifically looking into the role of Canadian officials in the arrest, deportation and maltreatment of Maher Arar. It's been given extraordinary powers, access to all government documents and full subpoena powers. The heads of Canada's police and intelligence agencies are facing the unprecedented experience of public cross-examination.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO, LEAD COUNCEL FOR ARAR INQUIRY: Would you agree with me that there was a great deal of pressure coming from the United States in respect of Canada's response to 9/11?
GARRY LOEPPKY, ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE: I think that we put a significant amount of pressure on our own people to make sure of that.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO: That's not the question, Deputy Commissioner. The question is do you feel there was a lot of pressure from the United States on Canada in respect of its response to 9/11?
GARRY LOEPPKY: It was clear that the United States was relying on us to do our part in terms of ensuring security of North America.
So far the inquiry has only dealt with the context, not the specifics of the Arar case. Already though, it is shedding light on how easy it apparently is for someone to get their name on the intelligence data base and how far this information can go.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO: That leads to my next question and that is that you have an investigation going on. You have a target, and that target is John Smith. In the course of that investigation you see Jim Jones talking to John Smith or on the telephone with John Smith. Does Jim Jones become part of your security intelligence information system?
GARRY LOEPPKY: Most major investigations, in fact all major investigations will have people that will show up in that investigation from time to time and ultimately may be found to be not involved.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Let's assume you haven't determined that he is the key player. He's a minor player because he speaks to John Smith periodically, not a lot. The question is once again, is Jim Jones his name, part of your security information data system?
GARRY LOEPPKY: It would be entered on the data system.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Staying with Jim Jones. Somebody in a US agency gives me a call in Toronto, or wherever I am and says "Listen, I have a few question about this guy Jim Jones. Do you have anything on him?" would you share that information with the American agency?
GARRY LOEPPKY: We would share that information if there was a reason to share it.
ItÂ’s early days yet for the inquiry. There's still a year of hearings to go. Arar's supporters and legal team are satisfied that at last the Canadian Government is allowing him a chance to get some answers for his disturbing and illegal treatment. Arar's lawyer in the US, who also represents the Australian victim of rendition, Mamdouh Habib, says the Australian Government should follow suit.
STEVEN MACPHERSON WATT: I think that's what really needs to happen in Mamdouh's case. The Australian Government really has to carry out an internal inquiry as to why this happened to one of their citizens in exactly the same way as Canada is doing with respect to Maher Arar.
While Maher Arar is looking forward to the truth coming out, his faith in the core Canadian values of justice and human rights has taken a beating. He's also paid a considerable personal price - a highly educated man, he's been unemployed since he came back from Syria. He still feels the psychological effects from his imprisonment. His hope now is for the world to learn the lessons of his experience.
MAHER ARAR: I just wanted people to think again about the cost of this so-called war on terror, that the Bush Administration has been conducting since 9/11. Is there any price for human beings being tortured? I mean, no-one denies that the world has changed after 9/11. No-one denies that we need more security. But, we should do it in a way that protects the honour and the rights of every human being. And that's the message I wanted to send to the world.
MARK DAVIS: Dateline asked Australia's Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, whether our government should also hold an inquiry into the rendering of one of our citizens, Mamdouh Habib. Philip Ruddock replied: "In Mr Habib's case, the Australian Government was not involved in his transfer to Egypt. Therefore there is no need for an inquiry."
For Canadian Maher Arar, even playing in a local park with his two children can't erase the memories of the past.
MAHER ARAR: I can still hear the screams of people who were being tortured in Syria. I can still hear it in my ears.
He spent 10 months last year in a Syrian jail where he too was tortured.
MAHER ARAR: I guess I am fortunate because I could talk about my experience, what about them?
REPORTER: Do you think about that often?
MAHER ARAR: Yes. Yes, I feel guilty if I don't speak about it.
It was late last year that a fragile Maher Arar returned home from Syria. Syria is a known abuser of human rights and certainly not a close ally of America. However, it was the Americans who sent him there. He'd been subject to one of the most secretive practices used by the United States in its war on terror. It's called rendition, when a suspect is picked up and without any legal process rendered to another country.
MAHER ARAR: My kids grew up in the past year and I would like to thank my fellow Canadians who have contributed...
His lawyers are now suing the US Government. They say America rendered him to Syria with the full knowledge he'd be tortured.
STEVEN MACPHERSON WATT, LAWYER FOR MAHER ARAR, UNITED STATES: United States had every reason to suspect it would happen and actually our lawsuit goes further. It says that was their intention. Maher was rendered to Syria by the United States for the express purpose of interrogation under torture.
The extraordinary story of Maher Arar began in the northern summer of 2002. The IT specialist was on holiday with his family in Tunisia. He left early to fly back home to Canada. His flight went through JFK airport in New York. While in transit, he was pulled aside by airport police.
MAHER ARAR: I was first surprised because you know I had worked in the States before and I travelled back and forth many times without a problem. But I thought that it was a routine thing at the beginning frankly.
It quickly became non-routine when the FBI turned up. For the next two days at the airport, he was interrogated and allowed little sleep.
MAHER ARAR: I said, "I need a lawyer." And they said, "You're not an American citizen so you're not entitled to a lawyer." And I asked them to make a phone call. They didn't, they just ignored my request.
At the end of the second day, Arar was taken here, to a detention centre in Brooklyn. He was finally told why he was being held. Authorities believed he was a member of al-Qa'ida.
MAHER ARAR: And I was very devastated to learn that and - I mean, they did not mention any specific reason. They just said, "In that document based on classified information we have, we believe that you are a member of al-Qa'ida."
It soon became clear that his captors were planning to send him to Syria. Arar was born in Syria, but only spent his childhood there. He left when he was 17, and never returned. He is now a Canadian citizen.
MAHER ARAR: During the 6-hour exhaustive interview two days before they deported me, they kept asking me about why I don't want to go back to Syria. And I explained to them why. You know, I said I was going to be tortured and I had not done my military service and my mother's cousin was accused of being a member of the Muslim brotherhood and he was put in prison for nine years. So I gave them many reasons but they didn't seem to care about those reasons. I told them, I said, "Listen, you're going to send me to a country that you know has no law, they don't follow the law. If you send me there I'm going to be tortured." So I raised the torture issue many times.
Despite this, early in the morning on the 13th day of his detention, without any type of legal hearing at all, he was shackled and driven to a private airport somewhere in New Jersey. He was put on a small luxury jet, most likely a Gulfstream. On the plane, Arar was accompanied by a team of men in suits.
REPORTER: Who were the people who boarded the plane? Who did they work for?
MAHER ARAR: I don't remember. They had badges. They did not specify. I know there are some newspaper articles that they mention it's CIA but I can't confirm or deny they were CIA. But I can confirm they were called the Special Removal Unit.
REPORTER: How do you know that?
MAHER ARAR: I overheard them talking on the phone.
REPORTER: And they were calling themselves the Special Removal Unit?
MAHER ARAR: Yes. You have to understand the situation I was in. I was very desperate. I was disorientated. It was sometimes it was like a dream.
It must have been a surreal experience. As the plane headed towards the Middle East, a meal was served and his captors settled in to watch a series of action movies.
MAHER ARAR: They asked me "Do you mind watching the movie?" I said, "No," but I was looking at the screen but my mind was thinking about what I'm going to do once I arrive in Syria, how am I going to face torture because I realised at that point they were sending me there to extract information, it was so clear.
Once the plane landed, Arar never saw his American captors again.
MAHER ARAR: The first thing I thought about when I arrived in Syria, when they took me to the room alone, the first thing that came to my mind is suicide. I said "If I had knife in my hand, I would have killed myself."
REPORTER: Was that because of the fear of what might happen to you?
MAHER ARAR: Of course. That was the feeling for me. I didn't know. I was crying all the time. I didn't know what was happening. I couldn't believe what was happening.
In a Syrian military intelligence jail, Arar was locked up in a narrow underground cell with no light. Beatings with a shredded black electrical cable 5cm wide soon began.
MAHER ARAR: The second day, they started beating me. The third day, that was, if I remember, that was the most intensive day of all. It was about 18 hours.
REPORTER: 18 hours of interrogation?
MAHER ARAR: Of interrogation. In between the interrogation sessions they would put me in a room again for like an hour to hear other people being tortured.
REPORTER: So what could you hear?
MAHER ARAR: All kinds of voices - of people being tortured. Most of those people they used to cry say " Allah, Allah" seeking the help of God. It was very awful. One of the noises I heard was an interrogator apparently was hitting someone's head on the metallic desk in that room. Bang, bang, bang like that. That was very, very painful psychological torture because I used to say to myself "My god, I'm going to say anything just to stop torture." They would basically put me back to the interrogation room and they would beat me again like three or four times with the cable and now they started beating me on my shoulder, on my back, on my hips. They would ask questions again. Sometimes they would beat first and then ask second and if you hesitated - if I hesitated to answer they would. I remember some time before the end of that day, they basically wanted me to say that I had been to Afghanistan. I said, "Yes, I have been to Afghanistan." Just to stop the torture.
REPORTER: Was that true? Have you been to Afghanistan?
MAHER ARAR: No, I have not been to Afghanistan.
To flesh out his confession Arar was asked which al-Qa'ida camp he trained in. He didn't know the name of any so he was given a list to choose from, which he did.
MAHER ARAR: Let me tell you something that happened during the interrogation. I urinated on myself twice during the interrogation. I don't know what that shows but my nerves, like, I can't control myself. It's so scary when you hear people being tortured. It's so scary when you are beaten. I would just say anything, anything they want, just to stop the torture.
Back home in Canada, Arar's wife Monia Mazigh spent the first few weeks trying to establish exactly where her husband had been taken.
MONIA MAZIGH: At the beginning I was very kind of naive. I thought that my husband would be back very soon and then more and more I realised that it's not the case. It's not as direct and as simple as I thought to be.
Monia Mazigh began campaigning to have her husband released. Initially, there was little public sympathy.
CURT PETROVICH, JOURNALIST CBC: A number of people were ready to assume that since he'd been arrested by the United States under some sort of unspecified security risk that he must be guilty of something.
A few months into his detention Monia's campaign turned around when reports of her husband's torture were made in the Canadian press.
CURT PETROVICH: And I think at that point people started to take an interest, people started to listen more to Monia Mazigh and it was around that time that Canadian officials themselves began working a little harder, I think, to get access to Maher Arar.
Maher Arar was finally released and returned to Canada 10 months after his arrest. By then his case had become a huge media story. After spending several weeks recovering physically from his experience, Arar made the decision to tell his story in a press conference.
MAHER ARAR: I had few hours to wait until my connecting flight to Montreal. This is when ... this is when my nightmare began.
For nearly an hour, Arar described in minute detail what happened to him. So compelling was his story, TV stations disrupted normal programing to play it in full.
MAHER ARAR: What I went through was beyond human imagination. I know the only way I will ever be able to move on in my life and have a future is if I can find out why this happened to me. I want to know why this happened to me. My priority right now is to clear my name, get to the bottom of the case and make sure this does not happen to any other Canadians in the future.
The government of the United States doesn't deny it sent Maher Arar to Syria. It says it did so because it had evidence suggesting a terrorist link. Arar's Canadian lawyer says this doesn't justify his rendition.
LORNE WALDMAN, LAWYER FOR MAHER ARAR, CANADA: Regardless of what evidence they had against Mr Arar, what happened to Mr Arar is totally unacceptable. I mean, the fact that he was a Canadian citizen detained in the United States, and was sent by Americans to Syria to be tortured in order to extract information is deeply distressing.
The United States Administration doesn't like talking publicly about the practice of rendition. Most of what's known comes from journalists like the 'Washington Post''s Dana Priest. She's spoken off the record with serving and former administration officials directly involved in the practice.
DANA PRIEST, WASHINGTON POST: Well, one of the people we interviewed said, "We don't kick the shit out of them. We have someone else do that."
According to the Post's sources it's generally low level suspects who are rendered and the purpose is either to get them off the streets or to get them to talk.
DANA PRIEST: So one of the reasons that they render people to other countries is because those other countries can be more aggressive with them.
It's unknown exactly how many people have been rendered during the war on terror but estimates run in the hundreds. Countries used include Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. Maher Arar is one of few to return. Australian Mamdouh Habib is another case. Habib was rendered to an Egyptian prison by the United States. He was there for around six months and was allegedly severely tortured. He was then sent to Guantanamo Bay. To knowingly send someone to a country where they'll be tortured is a breach of international and US domestic law. According to Dana Priest, lawyers in the CIA, the Justice Department and the White House have developed a strategy to try and get around this.
DANA PRIEST: The understanding is - the process is that you have to get the country that you're about to render somebody to, to verbally say or sign a paper - I think it is verbal, that they pledge not to abuse the person and once they have obtained that, I think that is done overseas by the CIA station chief, once they obtain that assurance, they then cable that back to Washington and that is their legal safeguard that makes this permissible.
REPORTER: So it's essentially just creating a degree of deniability?
DANA PRIEST: Absolutely. It is. It's creating a degree of deniability and there's a paper trail so that if it ever came up, they would be able to say "Well, we got promises from country X that they would not abuse this person and we have good relations with them and so we take their word."
In the case of Maher Arar, it's been revealed that the US did seek an assurance from Syria that he would not be maltreated.
STEVEN MACPHERSON WATT: That was an assurance from a country which the United States documents practises torture. It's also a country that there are seven countries that the United States recognises as state sponsors of terrorism and Syria's one of them. So how can you accept assurances from a country with that sort of a background. I mean that's a complete nonsense.
LORNE WALDMAN: To suggest in the face of what we now know about rendition that the Americans had any other intent other than to send Mr Arar to Syria to be subjected to interrogations and torture in order to extract information from him is completely naive. That is clearly what they were wanting to do because there is no other reason. Why would the Americans not respect his Canadian passport when he clearly stated he wanted to go back to Canada and he travelled on a Canadian passport. He didn't even have a valid Syrian passport, he hasn't been to Syria in years and had no connection to Syria. To suggest there was any motivation other than to send him to be tortured is absurd in my view.
Maher Arar has always maintained his complete innocence of any terrorist related activity. From the moment he returned to Canada he pressed for a public inquiry. He doesn't just blame the American government for what happened to him, he believes his own government was complicit.
MAHER ARAR: What we know now is they exchanged information with the United States. They used to actually neither confirm nor deny but now it's confirmed that they exchanged information with the United States at least during the time that I was detained there. We know they had meetings with the Syrian military intelligence. We know there was communication between Syria and Canada during the time I was detained there.
Arar's return to Canada sparked a heated debate in the Canadian parliament. The Opposition demanded to know what role Canadian officials had in the arrest and deportation of Maher Arar.
BILL BLAIKIE, CANADIAN PARLIAMENT: There is a Canadian role in this. Will the Prime Minister call a public inquiry so we can know what they did or did not do in order to prevent Mr Maher Arar from becoming the object of this so-called rendition, or as I called it yesterday, contracting out of torture. Shame on Canada.
The Government though put the blame squarely at the feet of the Americans.
JEAN CHRETIEN, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: It's just another fishing expedition. The people who are responsible for the deportation of this gentleman to Syria is the Government of the United States, not the Government of Canada. And I cannot understand the Opposition want to blame the Government of Canada for the actions of the Americans. This gentleman should have come to Canada, not to be sent to Syria, Mr Speaker.
According to journalist Curt Petrovich who covered the story intensively, it soon became clear that Canadian police and intelligence had at least some level of involvement in Arar's case.
CURT PETROVICH: It was becoming increasingly clear as some of the information was starting to leak out that Canadian agencies may have delivered some information to US authorities, that then enabled them to arrest Arar and send him to Syria and that while in Syria Mr Arar may have been interrogated using Canadian information. It started to look really, really bad.
Arar's lawyers think that he came on to the Canadian intelligence radar when he had lunch back in 2001 with a man who was under surveillance. They think that this, plus another casual relationship Arar had with someone under suspicion, was enough for his name to end up on a terrorist watch list. Then, when the Arar family went on holiday to Tunisia, the Canadian police, the RCMP, mistakenly thought Arar was fleeing Canada for good, so they notified the Americans.
LORNE WALDMAN: And we think that that's when they panicked. The RCMP probably at some point sent his details to the United States because Mr Arar entered the US several times in 2002 without incident and he went to Tunisia at the end of June, beginning of July 2002 and when he came back to Tunisia after his summer vacation at the end of the September, that's when he was arrested, detained and sent to Syria.
In a country proud of its democratic traditions and respect for human rights, the Maher Arar case was creating shockwaves. In the middle of this growing debate in Canada, an extraordinary article appeared in the 'Ottawa Citizen'. It claimed to have access to Maher Arar's intelligence file with apparently damning evidence documenting his training with al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan. However Maher Arar recognised much of the information in the article as being precisely what he had falsely said in Syria under torture.
LORNE WALDMAN: We don't know of any other sources of information about Mr Arar being in Afghanistan other than that. And we also know, because we were told, that the intelligence agencies were in Syria shortly after he was arrested and we know from the Syrian ambassador that his entire file was given to Canada.
The leak to the newspaper was seen as an attempt to smear his name and as yet another example of Canadian complicity in his ordeal. There was also a growing belief that the evidence against Maher Arar was decidedly shaky.
LORNE WALDMAN: Based upon what I've seen, absolutely nothing. Based upon erroneous inferences and assumptions that proved ultimately to be incorrect. Now obviously I don't have access to all of the secret evidence and we don't know what there is, but I would expect that by now the government has taken its best shot. I mean they leaked allegedly his entire file to the 'Ottawa Citizen' reporter Julie O'Neil and she wrote an article disclosing what was in the file. And what we saw was nothing new and different from what we already knew.
Finally at the beginning of this year, the government relented to media pressure and announced a public inquiry.
ANNE McLELLAN, MINISTER FOR PUBLIC SAFTY: I felt it was now the appropriate time to begin a public inquiry, to get to the bottom of this.
The inquiry is specifically looking into the role of Canadian officials in the arrest, deportation and maltreatment of Maher Arar. It's been given extraordinary powers, access to all government documents and full subpoena powers. The heads of Canada's police and intelligence agencies are facing the unprecedented experience of public cross-examination.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO, LEAD COUNCEL FOR ARAR INQUIRY: Would you agree with me that there was a great deal of pressure coming from the United States in respect of Canada's response to 9/11?
GARRY LOEPPKY, ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE: I think that we put a significant amount of pressure on our own people to make sure of that.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO: That's not the question, Deputy Commissioner. The question is do you feel there was a lot of pressure from the United States on Canada in respect of its response to 9/11?
GARRY LOEPPKY: It was clear that the United States was relying on us to do our part in terms of ensuring security of North America.
So far the inquiry has only dealt with the context, not the specifics of the Arar case. Already though, it is shedding light on how easy it apparently is for someone to get their name on the intelligence data base and how far this information can go.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO: That leads to my next question and that is that you have an investigation going on. You have a target, and that target is John Smith. In the course of that investigation you see Jim Jones talking to John Smith or on the telephone with John Smith. Does Jim Jones become part of your security intelligence information system?
GARRY LOEPPKY: Most major investigations, in fact all major investigations will have people that will show up in that investigation from time to time and ultimately may be found to be not involved.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Let's assume you haven't determined that he is the key player. He's a minor player because he speaks to John Smith periodically, not a lot. The question is once again, is Jim Jones his name, part of your security information data system?
GARRY LOEPPKY: It would be entered on the data system.
PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Staying with Jim Jones. Somebody in a US agency gives me a call in Toronto, or wherever I am and says "Listen, I have a few question about this guy Jim Jones. Do you have anything on him?" would you share that information with the American agency?
GARRY LOEPPKY: We would share that information if there was a reason to share it.
ItÂ’s early days yet for the inquiry. There's still a year of hearings to go. Arar's supporters and legal team are satisfied that at last the Canadian Government is allowing him a chance to get some answers for his disturbing and illegal treatment. Arar's lawyer in the US, who also represents the Australian victim of rendition, Mamdouh Habib, says the Australian Government should follow suit.
STEVEN MACPHERSON WATT: I think that's what really needs to happen in Mamdouh's case. The Australian Government really has to carry out an internal inquiry as to why this happened to one of their citizens in exactly the same way as Canada is doing with respect to Maher Arar.
While Maher Arar is looking forward to the truth coming out, his faith in the core Canadian values of justice and human rights has taken a beating. He's also paid a considerable personal price - a highly educated man, he's been unemployed since he came back from Syria. He still feels the psychological effects from his imprisonment. His hope now is for the world to learn the lessons of his experience.
MAHER ARAR: I just wanted people to think again about the cost of this so-called war on terror, that the Bush Administration has been conducting since 9/11. Is there any price for human beings being tortured? I mean, no-one denies that the world has changed after 9/11. No-one denies that we need more security. But, we should do it in a way that protects the honour and the rights of every human being. And that's the message I wanted to send to the world.
MARK DAVIS: Dateline asked Australia's Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, whether our government should also hold an inquiry into the rendering of one of our citizens, Mamdouh Habib. Philip Ruddock replied: "In Mr Habib's case, the Australian Government was not involved in his transfer to Egypt. Therefore there is no need for an inquiry."