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Former Canadian Top Cop faults US for Arar Rendition
OTTAWA - Canada's former top cop blames the United States for the deportation of a Canadian national to Syria, where he was tortured and held for a year, he told public broadcaster CBC on Wednesday.
Former Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, seen in 2002, in Ottawa. Canada's former top cop blames the United States for the deportation of a Canadian national to Syria, where he was tortured and held for a year, he told public broadcaster CBC on Wednesday. (AFP/File/Tom Hanson) Former Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli told the CBC that US authorities deliberately misled Canada's federal police about their intentions for Maher Arar.
Arar, who holds dual Canadian-Syrian citizenship, was detained by US authorities in New York while in transit from Tunisia to his home in Canada in September 2002 and deported to Syria where he was jailed for nearly a year.
A 2007 judicial report found US authorities had likely relied on faulty intelligence provided by the RCMP to arrest and deport Arar, who later claimed he was tortured in Syria.
The case led to Zaccardelli's resignation and Arar was awarded 10 million dollars by the Canadian government for his ordeal.
Now, Zaccardelli says the RCMP was "led to believe that (Arar) was going to be released and he was coming to Canada" after his New York stopover.
Zaccardelli explained that US authorities had asked whether the RCMP could detain Arar if he was sent to Canada, and the RCMP said there was no solid evidence linking Arar to terrorism.
Afterwards, Arar, then believed to be a peripheral figure in a broader RCMP terrorism investigation, simply did not show up.
Zaccardelli also said the decision to deport Arar came from senior officials in Washington, not the CIA or FBI. He noted that the Bush administration had started treating even allied foreign intelligence agencies with suspicion since the attacks of September 11, 2001.
"In effect, the Americans threw away the rule book on how to cooperate and work with their allies and their closest friends," Zaccardelli said.
In the interview, Zaccardelli also criticized the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for keeping the RCMP out of the loop on national security matters, where they should share responsibility.
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6 Comments so far
Show AllZacci is trying to salvage a rather tattered reputation. Unless I'm very wrong he was sacked not for the Arar affair, but due to pension 'irregularities' under his watch. Or it was because he covered up a pension scandal, whatever.
Canada's top cop was a crook.
I wondered if anyone would catch that fact. I believe you are right.
No, that's not right. He got the heave-ho for the Arar affair, because it was his decision-making that led to the sloppy information sharing (sharing unvetted intelligence info with a foreign entity about a Canadian citizen) that led to Arar's rendition to Syria.
Furthermore, despite what he says about the information sharing that he claims should happen between CSIS and the RCMP, that's also not true. After relevations in the late '70s about domestic spying by the RCMP on Canadians, they were relieved of that particular responsibility, and the newly formed CSIS was given the job of spying, both domestically and abroad. The general idea was to separate intelligence activity from law enforcement, because the temptation to use law enforcement as a way of suppressing the political activity that was the target of intelligence gathering had proven too tempting for various folks in charge of the RCMP... similar to what has been happening in St. Paul/Minneapolis this week. The RCMP is there as an institution to help provide public order on a national level, so they do things like investigate criminal organizations that cross provincial borders and so on. In short, they are supposed to work on crime, not politics (whether that politics be violent or not). Only at the point that a crime is committed by a politically motivated person would the RCMP become involved... and at that point they can then talk to CSIS to find out if there's anything known about that person by the intelligence service. This is supposed to help cover the area where a political organization becomes a criminal organization. Since Arar had not committed any crimes, and furthermore that they had no information that he'd committed any crimes, they shouldn't have said boo about him to anyone. However, in the eagerness to help the US after 9/11, a lot of those niceties got papered over in the execution by the various institutions.
The stuff about the pensions came out after he'd resigned, and it's not clear how much direct involvement he had in that. Nope, he got the can for what happened to Maher Arar.
All that said, what he does say has some truth to it... during the commission up here to investigate what happened, all the people directly involved (RCMP, CSIS, NY consulate staff, embassy staff, etc) said that it was outside their belief system that the US would ship him off to Syria... they just never considered that the US might do that even a possibility. There is no reason not to believe them when they say that... outside of some (not all) of the CSIS and RCMP people who testified. Simply put, they expected him to get extradited to Canada and to be barred from entering the U.S., not to get shipped off to Syria to be placed in an underground coffin for ten months.
I did read that the pension stuff came out before he resigned, but I'll certainly take your word for it. I'm not that famaliar with it obviously. I'm usually more careful to double check facts...thanks.
Pension scandal was outed in 2004, Zakki quit in 2007. The alligations of corruption date back to 2002, which is the year that Arar was sent to Syria. Did the egg go rotten before it was placed in the a/c of the cop car, or after? Either way that boy's reputation as an honest and respectable cop is much the same kind of reputation that bush has as a respected and honest president.
"Either way that boy's reputation as an honest and respectable cop is much the same kind of reputation that bush has as a respected and honest president."
Oops!