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Ottawa- Canada's federal police was reviled Tuesday for providing wrong intelligence to US authorities that led to the detention and torture in Syria of a Canadian citizen for his suspected links to Al-Qaeda.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) provided "inaccurate" information to US security officials in 2002 suggesting engineer Maher Arar, 37, was an "Islamic extremist" with links to Osama bin Laden's terror group, according to a report released on Monday.
The document stated that US authorities had likely relied on the information in deciding to detain and deport Arar to Syria after he was stopped in New York while in transit from Tunisia to his home in Canada.
The report cleared Arar of terrorism ties.
Newspaper headlines in on Tuesday shouted: "How Canada failed citizen Maher Arar" and "RCMP faulted; Arar cleared."
The Globe and Mail newspaper columnist John Ibbitson called on RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli to resign - not over the national force's "astonishingly irresponsible" acts, which led to "horrible consequences," but for trying to hide their misdeeds from the government and the public.
"This travesty occurred because procedures were not followed, training was inadequate, and accountability was replaced with passing the buck (all on Zaccardelli's watch) ... The RCMP has lost our trust," he wrote.
"Heads should roll," echoed the Toronto Star.
In an editorial, The Globe and Mail went further, saying:
"Canada's hands are dirty ... from sloppiness, indifference, butt-covering and defamation."
"The Arar tragedy has much to teach Canada, and indeed all Western democracies (about the need for due process)," the national newspaper said.
Alexa Leblanc, director of a Quebec rights group, told AFP the case demonstrated that the war on terrorism does not justify lapses in civil rights and freedoms, or due process.
"It's concerning to see the impact (that police bungling) can have on an innocent person," she said.
Justice Dennis O'Connor said in his 822-page report that Arar was an innocent victim who should never have been detained and who had no links to the Al-Qaeda network.
He also called for a review of three similar cases involving Canadians Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.
Each claimed to have been detained and tortured by Syrian Military Intelligence while being interrogated based on information that originated in Canada.
Arar, married with two children, was arrested by US authorities in September 2002 and detained for 12 days before being sent to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured for almost one year, according to the report.
Although Canadian officials were not found directly responsible for those events, Canadian police got the ball rolling by identifying Arar as a "person of interest" after he was spotted talking to another terror suspect outside an Ottawa restaurant, O'Connor said.
The tag snowballed amid heightened tensions over terrorism, he said in his report.
Only the Ottawa Citizen in an editorial partly defended the RCMP, saying: "Many of the errors committed by the (RCMP) are understandable, but they are not acceptable."
To bolster its argument, the newspaper said there was a "great deal of pressure" on the force to investigate possible terror plots in the period following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States, since more attacks were expected.
"Being out of the national security game for decades (since the creation of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in the early 1980s), the Mounties didn't have investigators skilled in hunting terrorists," the newspaper said.
O'Connor's report made 23 recommendations, including proposing stricter rules for national security investigations and urging complaints be made to the US and Syrian governments.
Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, urged Ottawa to act on them "without further delay."
But the government's response was tepid. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the recommendations would be reviewed and possible compensation for Arar in light of a lawsuit he filed against the government would be considered.
Arar, a telecommunications engineer who denied the terrorism accusations after returning to Canada in 2003 and had asked for a public inquiry, said the report restored his reputation. - Sapa-AFP
IOL: False data leads to innocent man's torture
Originally Posted by Deborah 
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