Golden Oldies

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

Popeye - 19 Sep 2006 05:20 GMT

5 From: John R. Macdonald - view profile
Date: Wed, Feb 11 2004 10:41 pm
Email: John R. Macdonald <scubaj...@remove.claranet.fr>
Groups: rec.scuba

On 11 Feb 2004 09:44:58 GMT, buzcutt...@aol.comByteMe (Popeye NCAT3)
wrote:

>>From: "chilly" slar...@shaw.canada
>>Date: 2/11/04 4:21 AM Eastern Standard Time
>>Message-id: <2umWb.459004$JQ1.129067@pd7tw1no>

>>And so he did but he blamed it on Clinton.

> Who cares?

> How bout that Canadian citizen you guys sent off to be tortured in Syria?

You are (typically) twisting the facts there. He was arrested while in
transit in the US, on his way home to Canada, by US authorities. He
was deported to Syria via Jordan by the US after being held for 12 or
13 days in the US.

===========================================

Canadian police errors led to man's torture -probe

18 Sep 2006 22:19:55 GMT
Source: Reuters

(Adds quotes from Arar, government, lawyer. Please note unusual spelling of
Marlys Edwardh in second last paragraph)

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Canadian police wrongly identified an Ottawa
software engineer as an Islamic extremist, prompting U.S. agents to deport
him to Syria, where he was tortured, an official inquiry concluded on
Monday.

Maher Arar, who holds Canadian and Syrian nationality, was arrested in New
York in September 2002 and accused of being an al-Qaeda member. In fact,
said the judge who led the probe, all the signs point to the fact Arar was
innocent.

Arar, 36, says he was repeatedly tortured in the year he spent in Damascus
jails, and the inquiry agreed that he had been tortured. He was freed in
2003.

Judge Dennis O'Connor, who was asked by the Canadian government in 2004 to
examine what had happened, found the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had
wrongly told U.S. authorities that Arar was an Islamic extremist.

"The provision of this inaccurate information ... (was) totally
unacceptable" and guaranteed the United States would treat Arar as a serious
threat, O'Connor said.

"I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that
Mr Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constitute a threat
to the security of Canada."

Civil rights advocates said the case of Arar and three other Canadians who
ended up in Syrian jails raised suspicions that Canada might be outsourcing
interrogation to nations where torture was commonplace.

O'Connor said the case of the other three men was troubling and warranted
further investigation. But he found no evidence that the Canadian government
had played any direct role in the U.S. decision to deport Arar to Syria.

Arar, calling on the government to hold accountable the officials he said
were responsible for his ordeal, had tears in his eyes when asked by
reporters for his reaction.

"Today Justice O'Connor has cleared my name and restored my reputation,"
said Arar, who has launched a lawsuit against Ottawa seeking compensation.

O'Connor's three-volume report castigated the Mounties for slipshod work in
the wake of the 9/11 suicide attacks.

It said the Mounties exaggerated Arar's importance and later asked U.S.
customs agents to put Arar and his wife on a special watch list, calling
them "Islamic extremist individuals suspected of being linked to the Al
Qaeda terrorist movement".

U.S. agencies declined to be questioned by O'Connor as to why they had
deported Arar.

"I do conclude it is very likely that they relied on information received
from the RCMP in making the decision to remove Mr Arar to Syria," the judge
wrote.

Public Security Minister Stockwell Day, who has overall responsibility for
the forces of law and order, said he was satisfied with the finding that
Canadian officials had not played a direct role in the U.S. decision to
deport Arar to Syria.

"What happened to Mr Arar is very regrettable. We hope ... never to see this
happen again," he told reporters.

Arar first came to police attention in October 2001 when he was seen talking
to another man already being investigated for possible al-Qaeda links.

O'Connor found that police made a number of serious mistakes in the Arar
case.

The unit probing possible terror networks was poorly supervised and was
comprised largely of financial fraud experts, who had little experience of
national security cases.

Police gave all the files from their probe to the United States without
screening the data for inaccuracies or following internal rules that limited
what they could hand over.

"It was a breathtakingly incompetent investigation ... a disaster," said
Marlys Edwardh, a lawyer for Arar.

O'Connor criticized unnamed Canadian officials, whom he said had leaked
confidential and sometimes inaccurate information about Arar both before and
after his release in a bid to demonstrate he really was a threat to national
security.

(With additional reporting by Randall Palmer in Ottawa)

Signature

Popeye
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle
www.finalprotectivefire.com

Reply to this Message

Popeye - 19 Sep 2006 20:25 GMT

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1619246.ece

Published: 19 September 2006
President Jacques Chirac has broken ranks with the US and Britain by calling
for the suspension of UN Security Council action against Iran during
negotiations over its nuclear programme.

In a radio interview yesterday before flying to New York for the UN General
Assembly, the French President provoked a diplomatic storm by backing Iran's
demand that the Security Council should halt its involvement in the nuclear
dossier.

The demand is spelt out in Iran's confidential 20-page response to a Western
offer of technological and economic co-operation in return for a freeze on
nuclear activities which could lead to production of a nuclear weapon. The
Independent has obtained a copy of the document.

M. Chirac suggested that the group of six nations involved in talks with
Iran - Britain, the US, France, Germany, Russia and China - should "set an
agenda, then start negotiations".

"We must, on the one hand, together, Iran and the six countries, meet and
set an agenda, then start negotiations. Then, during these negotiations, I
suggest that the six renounce referring [Iran to] the UN Security Council
and that Iran renounce uranium enrichment during negotiations," M. Chirac
said.

The French President is the first European leader to state publicly that a
freeze by Iran is not a precondition for opening talks. The concession to
Iran seems to be linked to events in Lebanon, where there had been concern
that French soldiers may be targeted by Iran's proxy militia, Hizbollah,
over France's previously hardline stance in the nuclear negotiations.

Iranian diplomats say that there has been "positive co-operation" between
Iran, France and Italy, which has also stationed troops in southern Lebanon
and whose Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, announced that he would meet the
Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in New York this week. Diplomats in
Paris suggested that M. Chirac's switch of position might be intended to
protect the French troops.

But M. Chirac's abrupt announcement is likely to complicate talks in New
York involving the foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council
members plus Germany, by demonstrating that Iran has succeeded in driving a
wedge between them.

The six have been unanimous in insisting that negotiations cannot take place
until Iran suspends uranium enrichment in line with a UN demand that called
for such a freeze before the end of August. Iran says that a suspension
cannot be a precondition for the talks.

A Foreign Office spokesman played down suggestions of a rift, saying that
"we have always said that action in the Security Council is reversible if
the Iranians suspend". But President Chirac's initiative is privately being
described as "unhelpful" and it is hoped that his statement is a personal
initiative which does not signal a change in the official French position.

With the US publicly pressing for sanctions against Iran, M. Chirac said on
the Europe-1 radio channel: "I don't believe in a solution without dialogue.
I am not pessimistic. I think that Iran is a great nation, an old culture,
an old civilisation, and that we can find solutions through dialogue."

However, he ruled out a meeting on the sidelines of the General Assembly
session with Mr Ahmadinejad.

In its response to the 6 August offer from the six powers, Iran said: "If
negotiation is to be considered as a way for mutual understanding and
concord, then it is intrinsically in contradiction with tabling the issue at
the Security Council. Therefore cessation of the Security Council
involvement ... is self-evident."

President Jacques Chirac has broken ranks with the US and Britain by calling
for the suspension of UN Security Council action against Iran during
negotiations over its nuclear programme.

In a radio interview yesterday before flying to New York for the UN General
Assembly, the French President provoked a diplomatic storm by backing Iran's
demand that the Security Council should halt its involvement in the nuclear
dossier.

The demand is spelt out in Iran's confidential 20-page response to a Western
offer of technological and economic co-operation in return for a freeze on
nuclear activities which could lead to production of a nuclear weapon. The
Independent has obtained a copy of the document.
=========================
The French President is the first European leader to state publicly that a
freeze by Iran is not a precondition for opening talks. The concession to
Iran seems to be linked to events in Lebanon, where there had been concern
that French soldiers may be targeted by Iran's proxy militia, Hizbollah,
over France's previously hardline stance in the nuclear negotiations.

Reply to this Message