Argument & Observation - Security And Accountability:
Justice must replace injustice for Maher Arar
The veil of secrecy must be broken with a public inquiry
Op Ed by Alex Neve
The Ottawa Citizen Thursday January 22, 2004
The RCMP raid yesterday on the Ottawa Citizen and the home of a senior Citizen journalist extends the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the Maher Arar tragedy since the beginning.
The raid comes in the wake of a number of leaks about the case late last year to several journalists from unnamed Canadian sources, likely from within law enforcement agencies. And today, journalists across Canada, many of whom have played an important role in trying to expose the truth about Canada's involvement in Maher's deportation and torture, will be asking themselves: Am I next? If I write another story, will I be charged by the RCMP?
These developments make it absolutely clear that the only way to get to the bottom of the role played by the RCMP, CSIS and other Canadian officials in Maher's tragedy is by conducting a full public inquiry.
Since his release last October from one year of harrowing imprisonment in Syria, Maher has been very clear: after the injustice, now there must be justice. That means justice on many fronts.
• It means justice from the United States, from where he was summarily deported to face the virtual certainty of torture in Syria.
• It means justice from Jordan, where he was beaten and mistreated while en route.
• It means justice from Syria, where he was tortured, held in abysmal conditions, and where, throughout twelve long months of imprisonment, he was never charged with any offence.
By no means has the call for justice only been about what happened abroad. It is also very much about what role may have been played by Canadian law enforcement or security agencies in the chain of events that led to this human rights fiasco. It is for that reason that Maher, concerned organizations like Amnesty International, numerous politicians, and thousands upon thousands of Canadians have demanded that the federal government immediately convene a public inquiry to examine Canada’s role in this case.
The cruel irony for Maher Arar is that return to Canada has not meant a return to justice. In many respects, in fact, it has been quite the contrary. The government has to date refused to convene an inquiry and has instead relied upon complaints processes at the RCMP and CSIS, neither of which are public and neither of which have the important powers of an inquiry to compel testimony and order the disclosure of documents.
At the same time as those processes unfold behind closed doors, Maher has been subjected to a number of outrageous and very public leaks to journalists from unnamed Canadian sources, who have made unsubstantiated allegations such as the assertion that he spent time at an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. That of course is something that Maher adamantly denies and has told Canadians he falsely confessed to during interrogations in Syria, as a way of bringing his agonizing torture to an end.
Those leaks have raised fundamental questions about due process and the rule of law for Maher Arar: unnamed sources, repeating allegations obtained under torture, while providing Maher with no opportunity to see the evidence, know his accusers and respond.
Amnesty International called for investigations into the leaks and urged that there be prosecutions if any criminal offences had been committed. Now we learn that the RCMP is carrying out investigations of some description and has taken the dramatic step of raiding journalists’ offices and demanding that they disclose the source of the leaks. Does this provide comfort? Is justice any closer? Hardly.
It is disturbing that the search warrants being used here appear to have been issued under the Security of Information Act, an outcome of the Anti-Terrorism Act adopted in Canada in 2001. That means it will be virtually impossible for Maher Arar and the Canadian public to know what basis the RCMP asserted to explain the need for the search warrants. As such, a shroud of secrecy continues to envelope Maher’s case. No answers, just more silence.
Should the RCMP even be the body carrying out this investigation? In at least one case, the Ottawa Citizen article of November 8, it is almost crystal clear that the source of the leak was within the RCMP. Should they be investigating themselves? Does that instill confidence that the investigation will be thorough-going and independent? At the very least we need to see clear signs that the investigation is being carried out in a way that scrupulously ensures impartiality.
Are the police even looking to themselves to determine who leaked the information, or are they only pursuing the recipient of the leak? Taking the bold and confrontational step of trying to force a reporter to reveal sources raises fundamental questions about the right of journalists to protect those sources and will almost certainly end up in the courts for quite some time to come. Why are the RCMP not able or not willing to get these answers from within their ranks?
The pattern of no accountability from within has been pervasive in the Arar case. On several occasions Canadian officials have said that they are unable to determine what role Canadian agencies may have played in the case and have therefore had to turn to the U.S. government to tell them what Canadians have been doing. Now we seem to have the RCMP saying that it is unable to determine what its own officers have been doing, and that the RCMP instead has to try to force journalists to answer that for them. And tied up in that, there is the absurd paradox that a journalist is potentially being criminally pursued for possessing information that was likely provided by a law enforcement agency in the first place.
Enough with the smoke and mirrors. It is time for some real answers and some real accounting.
It is time to respond as a nation to Maher Arar’s plea for justice.
It is time for a public inquiry.
TAKE ACTION!
Alex Neve is secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, English branch.
