She Fought for Her Husband, Maher Arar

[struggle4progress]

Hope & Despair: My Struggle to Free My Husband, Maher Arar
By Monia Mazigh (translated by Patricia Claxton and Fred A. Reed)
McClelland & Stewart (2008)

By Michael Byers
TheTyee.ca
February 11, 2009

... Maher Arar was detained at New York's JFK Airport on September 26, 2002, while returning to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia. After twelve days of questioning, he was deported to Jordan and then Syria -- his place of birth and, because Syria does not recognize renunciations of citizenship, one of his two countries of nationality.

Mazigh, a very capable individual who holds a PhD in finance from McGill, immediately contacted Canadian consular officials. Expecting assistance, she instead encountered a string of delays and excuses ...

He returned to Canada with deep psychological scars, having spent nearly a year in a dark, dank cell that was just two metres long, one metre wide and slightly more than two metres high. He had been tortured repeatedly, including by being beaten on the palms and wrists with an electrical cable.

Perhaps to preserve some last remnants of privacy, Mazigh's book only hints at the challenges she faced in rehabilitating her husband and family life ...

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2009/02/11/MaherArar/