Canada still demanding U.S. take Canadian off its terror watchlist

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/23/america/NA-GEN-Canada-Torture.php

Canada still demanding U.S. take Canadian off its terror watchlist
The Associated Press


TORONTO: Canada on Tuesday resumed its tussle with the United States over the extraordinary rendition case of Maher Arar, insisting the Canadian citizen who was shipped to Syria by U.S. authorities should be taken off U.S. watchlists.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, responding to a letter from senior U.S. officials that claimed intelligence in Washington indicated Arar belongs on the watchlists, said Ottawa would continue to press its case to have the engineer's name cleared.

"We're aware that the United States has other information ... It simply does not alter our opinion that Mr. Arar is not a threat, nor is his family," Day said.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, is the best-known case of extraordinary rendition, a practice in which the U.S. government sends foreign terror suspects to third countries for interrogation.

He was detained at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport in 2002 during a stopover on his way home to Canada from a vacation with his family in Tunisia. The United States turned him over to Syria, where he says he was tortured and kept in a dark cell for nearly a year.