Inquiry Finds Canadian Terror Suspect Wrongly Accused and Tortured

And late today, Canada's parliament unanimously passed a motion that the government should apologize to Mr. Arar. The inquiry commission that issued its report Monday was appointed more than two years ago, after Mr. Arar was released from prison and after his case had attracted much attention in the Canadian media.

Paul Cavalluzzo served as the commission's lead counsel and joins us now from Toronto.

Let's start, if we could, with your chief finding regarding Mr. Arar himself. The conclusion is that, without any doubt, he had no links to terrorism, correct?

PAUL CAVALLUZZO, Attorney for Inquiry into Maher Arar Case: That's correct. And certainly, from Mr. Arar's perspective, that was very, very important, because for the last three or four years, he has been under a cloud of suspicion that he was engaged in terrorist activities. It was a very important finding, from his perspective.

JEFFREY BROWN: So how did he become a suspect? How did this series of bad information begin?

PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Well, Jeffrey, it all started in October of 2001 when Mr. Arar was observed outside a coffee shop in Ottawa with a person who the RCMP suspected of terrorist activities. And at that point in time, he came on their radar screen. And they did an investigation in which he was involved.

JEFFREY BROWN: How did your report conclude that Canadian intelligence got it all so wrong?

PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Well, we reviewed all of the evidence. We had the opportunity to review all of the documents. And we discovered that there was a lot of information-sharing with the Americans -- some of which was inaccurate and imprecise -- relating to Mr. Arar, some of which exaggerated his importance to the investigation. And at the same time, while he was detained in the United States, they also shared information which was inaccurate.

JEFFREY BROWN: And so you conclude that it was based on this inaccurate information that he was, in fact, detained in New York?

PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Certainly the evidence points that way. Indeed, the secretary of state, Colin Powell, at the time in December of 2003 said that Mr. Arar was placed on a terrorist watch list based on information received from Canadian authorities.

PAUL CAVALLUZZO: No. That decision was made by the American agencies. And certainly, they were less than candid with the Canadian officials. And the Canadian authorities were quite surprised when they discovered that he had been rendered to Syria.

JEFFREY BROWN: And when and how did Canadian officials learn about what had happened?

PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Well, unfortunately, Mr. Arar was rendered on October the 8th, about 3:00 in the morning. He was removed from the detention center in Brooklyn, and he was put on a jet and taken to Jordan and then to Syria, where he arrived probably around October 9th or 10th.

American authorities did not disclose formally to Canadian authorities where he was. And Canadian authorities only found out on October 21st, when the Syrian military intelligence advised our ambassador in Damascus that Mr. Arar was in detention in Syria.

PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Well, it's more than that. Certainly, we feel that the American government violated the Vienna Convention by not giving Mr. Arar consular access to the consulate office in New York when he was in detention shortly after September 26th of 2002, and also the manner in which he was rendered to a country which the Americans should have known contained a very credible risk of torture.

Canadian authorities were willing to accept Mr. Arar, and that was only 200 miles away, yet the American authorities sent him to Syria.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, the greatest criticism and the brunt of your report is aimed at your own nation's intelligence and police work in this case. What are you recommending looking to the future to prevent this from happening?

PAUL CAVALLUZZO: Well, certainly, we emphasize that information-sharing with foreign agencies is absolutely vital in the global fight with terrorism, but at the same time there have to be restrictions on how that information is shared. Obviously, the information given has to be accurate, has to be precise, has to be relevant, and has to respect the privacy interests of Canadian citizens. And that's unfortunately what did not happen in respect to Mr. Arar.