Ottawa handed Arar file to U.S.

By PAUL KORING and JEFF SALLOT
From Thursday's Globe and Mail

Washington and Ottawa  Solicitor-General Wayne Easter admitted Wednesday
that Canada provided U.S. intelligence agencies with a dossier of
information about Maher Arar, the Canadian who was subsequently arrested
and deported to Syria where he was tortured for months.

After meeting yesterday in Washington with U.S. Attorney-General John
Ashcroft, Mr. Easter made the admission when he insisted that Canada was
not alone in giving information to the Americans.

The dossier on Mr. Arar "didn't just come from Canada alone," Mr.
Easter said, without indicating which other nations had provided the
Americans with information about Mr. Arar. "I've always admitted that
certainly we do exchange information with the security and law-enforcement
agencies in the United States in order to protect out national
security," Mr. Easter said.

Although he refused to explain what threat if any Mr. Arar posed to
national security in either Canada or the United States, he emerged from
the meeting with Mr. Ashcroft saying the United States remains certain that
it did the right thing by deporting him to Syria.

Mr. Ashcroft chose not to join Mr. Easter at a postmeeting news conference.
"Mr. Ashcroft assured us that, from his perspective, the decisions
that were made were certainly made within the context of the laws of the
United States and [he] feels there were no laws broken," Mr. Easter
said, adding "he feels that they were operating under their mandate in
the interest of their laws and their national security."

The incident has chilled already difficult relations between Washington and
Ottawa and has caused political uproar in Canada. What remains unclear is
whether senior Canadian officials were aware of, or even okayed, the
high-level U.S. decision to deport Mr. Arar to Syria, a country known to
torture prisoners.

Mr. Arar, who also holds Syrian citizenship, was arrested Sept. 26, 2002,
in New York as he was returning to Canada from a visit to Tunisia.
Supporters of Mr. Arar said they have always suspected the Canadian
government helped the Americans. "We have always believed this was the
case, but finally Mr. Easter has admitted some information was
passed," said Riad Saloojee, the executive director of the Canadian
section of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The questions now are: "What was that information? Was it
determinative in the decision to deport him to Syria?" Mr. Saloojee
said.

Another key missing piece is whether the White House advised or even
consulted the Canadian government before ordering Mr. Arar deported to
Syria. A top U.S. Justice official signed an unusual order allowing Mr.
Arar to be deported to Syria. To do so, the Justice Department needed to
determine that sending Mr. Arar back to Canada would be "prejudicial
to the interests of the United States." That order, reported yesterday
by The Washington Post, was signed by then deputy attorney-general Larry
Thompson, acting on Mr. Ashcroft's behalf.

Mr. Thompson, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, refused to
answer questions yesterday about the deportation of Mr. Arar. Prime
Minister Jean Chrtien has demanded an explanation from the U.S. government,
saying: "It's awful what they've done" by deporting Mr. Arar to
Syria. He has also suggested that his government played no role in the
affair. "It is the Americans who did it, not the Canadians," Mr.
Chrtien said.

The extent of Canada's role remains unclear, however. Mr. Easter's
admission that Canadian information  presumably intelligence files from
either the Canadian Security Intelligence Service or the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police about Mr. Arar was given to U.S. agencies confirms a version
of events provided by U.S. Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci. "Mr.
Arar is very well known to Canadian law enforcement. They understand our
handling of the case. They wouldn't be happy to see him come back to
Canada," he has said.

Mr. Easter has ruled out a public inquiry. Yesterday he repeatedly referred
to the importance of protecting the rights of Canadians but, in much
stronger terms, he warned of the dangers of failing to give the United
States information about to terrorism and terrorist suspects. "We
cannot as a country in Canada, in terms of our economic livelihood, lose
our focus on the national security issues," he said.


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