Arar documents link former defence minister to attempt to delay inquiry

Arar documents link former defence minister to attempt to delay inquiry
Last Updated Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:41:31 EDT

OTTAWA - Documents released by the Arar Commission suggest former foreign affairs minister Bill Graham asked for Washington's help in staving off a public inquiry into the case.

The documents are part of more than 2,000 pages of government e-mail, memos and handwritten notes released Thursday by the public inquiry into Maher Arar's case. They were written just weeks after Arar, a Canadian citizen, went public with his story of deportation and detention in a Syrian prison. He says he was tortured during his detention.

Riad Saloojee, the executive director of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, says the protocol was little more than a public relations strategy. "What we got from the Americans was simply telling Canadians that 'Yes we will notify you when we decide to send one your citizens to be tortured.'"

The government did call an inquiry shortly after, but only after a politically embarrassing raid by the RCMP on the home and office of a journalist who had been investigating Arar's case.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/04/22/arar050422.html

Smells like something is rotten in Denmark.

Nothing more.

The world of diplomacy, and being in touch with depts and in other govts takes time.

Why is everyone so keen to vote in Harper and the neocons??

Please show me where a Canadian citizen being taken for torture with the complicity of the Canadian government has anything to do with Harper.

If this is the kind of government that one gets without Harper then perhaps Harper and his repugs would be better for citizens.

on the Liberals, only leaves you one choice.

And if you want a Bush clone...you're possibly the only Canadian that does.

credibility in my eyes than either the Glibs OR the Bush-wannabees

and you know it. Voting for them will get you Harper

It's really cynical. It's like saying: "Don't vote for what you believe in, settle for us instead" Perhaps if the Liberals had a true leader with a vision for us, I could bring myself to do it, but Martin has no ideas for the country. He's a bean-counter (and a very good one at that), not a nation builder.

Get Harper. See how wonderful THAT is

you like you or your family being shipped to Iraq then.

Any attempts he makes, in what will most likely be a minority gov't, will be quickly shut down. He'll never have the full support of the country.

And do further damage to the country.

And I don't have much of a shit-eating grin.

Should see.

There happens to be a party called the NDP that got a significant number of votes without the seats to go with them. If one were to analyze things differently and take the left liberals that don't have a home anymore and the red Tories that probably went with the liberals last time, then one would think that there could be a significant number of additional votes for the NDP.

Your position is much like how do you want to die, you have two choices.

and have no more hope of it now than when you started.

The choice is Harper or Martin. Like it or not

Define the votes.

Guess for some that if the Liberals aren't in power then it has to be bad.

that our dept of foreign affairs in general, and Bill Graham in particular as minister, all clapped and cheered and decided to send a Canadian citizen off to Syria to be tortured??

Of course not. Somewhere, somehow in the great bureaucracy...somebody screwed up. And this poor bugger fell through the cracks.

Of course it should be investigated...once we have some idea of what to investigate...and people in the wrong should get canned...so it never ever happens again.

But please stop concluding there is something 'rotten' about it, and that you should turn out all Liberals for this screw-up, no matter how dreadful.

If Harper was in there...we'd ALL be in Iraq, or in danger of terrorism resulting from that.

Tell me why Axworthy disappeared?

And, by the by, who was the Canadian ambassador in Denmark?

scandal, such as it is. The way the government dealt with the Arar case is appalling. To allow the US to send Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, to Syria and do nothing about it until forced by the public who, thanks to his courageous wife, were informed of the facts, should cause every citizen concern, imo.

This would be something I would expect of the faux cons, not of a Liberal government.