The police agents carried out the raids on the grounds that they were looking for the source of a leak of RCMP classified information in the case of Arar. U.S. authorities had arrested Arar at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City in September 2002 as a suspected “terrorist,” jailed him, and deported him to Syria a month later. There he underwent weeks of torture. Arar returned to Canada in October last year after Syrian authorities released him.

In the wake of Arar’s release, press attention focused on the complicity of Canadian police agencies in the decision of U.S. authorities to arrest Arar and deport him to Syria, where he faced torture, instead of sending him to Canada. After his return to Canada last fall, Arar called for a public inquiry into the role of Canadian authorities in his deportation, and to clear his name.

O’Neill could be charged under the Security of Information Act, rushed through parliament in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the United States. If convicted, she could be sentenced to up to 14 years in jail.

The particular section of the act used to justify the raid, making it illegal to receive information known or believed to be an “official secret,” has been in the Official Secrets Act for decades. Police have been emboldened to make use of this provision by the new political context of the U.S.-led “war on terrorism” that Ottawa increasingly supports.

“It is a black, black day for freedom in this country,” said Scott Anderson, editor-in-chief of the Ottawa Citizen. “The Canadian government has a lot to answer for, and it’s using intimidation to prevent the search for the truth.”

The Canadian Association of Journalists stated, “The Security of Information Act and its broad prohibitions against possession of sensitive government materials threatens journalists’ right and duty to thoroughly and truthfully investigate stories related to national security.”

“Protection of sources is the cornerstone of press freedom,” said Robert Minard, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders.

In fact, the information leaked to O’Neill was designed to polish up the image of the political police. The story she published claimed that Arar had come into the RCMP’s sights while they investigated an alleged al Qaeda logistical support group based in Ottawa. One of the leaked documents referred to in the story describes “minute details” of Arar’s alleged terrorist training at a camp in Afghanistan, supposedly revealed to Syrian intelligence agents during the first few weeks of his detention in Syria.

After his release last fall, Arar said that he was beaten and tortured with electric cables for weeks. “Under torture I told them what they wanted to hear,” he said. Arar insists that he has never been in Afghanistan or had any involvement with a terrorist organization.

“The leaks have had a devastating effect on me and my family,” said Arar. He also opposed the raid on O’Neill’s home and office, saying, “My wife and I don’t believe it’s the right way to go and attack journalists. I think the RCMP has to look for answers within their organization.”

The police raid on the Citizen reporter’s home came one day before lawyers with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, acting on Arar’s behalf, launched a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of Homeland Security Thomas Ridge, and other top U.S. officials under the Torture Victims Protection Act. Arar is banned from the United States.

Arar and his lawyers argued that U.S. authorities sent him to Syria intentionally to get information extracted by torture.

No amount of damages is specified in the suit. Lawyers said a declaration of Arar’s innocence was more important than the amount of compensation.

The CBS TV News program 60 Minutes II quoted unnamed U.S. government officials who said that Canadian intelligence officers knew in advance that the U.S. authorities were going to deport Arar to Syria and “signed off on the decision.”

Imad Moustafa, the chargé d’affaires at the Syrian embassy in Washington, told the November 6 Washington Post that Syria had agreed to imprison Arar as a goodwill gesture to Washington.

The release was a “political decision” made in Damascus, Moustafa said, according to the Post. “We believe there is no case against him.”

The previous day the Post reported that U.S. officials said “the Arar case fits the profile of a covert CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’—the practice of turning over low-level, suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of which are known to torture prisoners.

“In the early 1990s,” continued the article, “renditions were exclusively law enforcement operations in which suspects were…brought to the United States for trial or questioning. But CIA teams, working with foreign intelligence services, now capture suspected terrorists in one country and render them to another, often after U.S., interrogators have tried to gain information from them.”  
 
 
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