Canada's role in Arar's ordeal

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Is Canada complicit in torture? That is the subject of the public inquiry that began Monday into the ordeal of Maher Arar of Ottawa. It is a question that Canadians never imagined would be seriously put to them. This is a civilized land. Its highest law is a constitution that protects individual rights. It is a signatory to international conventions barring torture.

Yet Mr. Arar has borne witness to a realm that few Canadians are aware of. He was made to disappear from the world of law and individual rights, and to reappear in the world of barbarism, without ever being given a chance to plead his case before a judge. The United States arrested Mr. Arar at a New York airport in September, 2002, and deported him in the middle of the night to Syria, where he was tortured into signing a confession. Details of that confession were later leaked by Canadian security officials to the media.

It was no surprise, then, that Canada's former chief spy, appearing as the inquiry's first witness, acknowledged that this country does indeed share information with countries that use torture. As Ward Elcock, who recently completed 10 years at the helm of CSIS, the civilian spy agency, explained, he was obliged to check out any tips about threats to Canada, whether received directly from countries that use torture or from intermediaries.
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As if to underline why an inquiry was needed to answer these questions, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, a civilian agency that oversees CSIS, released a report about CSIS's role in the Arar affair with all 89 pages blacked out. Only the inquiry commissioner, Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor of Ontario, and Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan, will have a chance to view the uncensored document.
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