Posted on 04/30/2003 1:11:01 PM PDT by browardchad
An Ottawa telecommunications engineer who was deported to Syria by the United States last fall is about to be charged by Syrian officials with terrorist-related activity, leaving virtually no hope for his return to Canada.
The pending charges are the latest development in the mysterious case of Maher Arar, who was arrested by U.S. immigration officials during a stopover at a New York airport last September while returning to Canada from a family visit overseas.
"This is very discouraging," said Ottawa-area MP Marlene Catterall, who saw Mr. Arar last week in Damascus. "The whole thing leaves me somewhat astonished."
Ms. Catterall said Syrian officials refused to spell out their case against Mr. Arar, a respected software engineer who lived in Ottawa with his wife and two young children. Ms. Catterall said a Syrian military court may try Mr. Arar behind closed doors, making it impossible for his family or the Canadian government to monitor his case.
Ms. Catterall said Syrian intelligence officials believe Mr. Arar was a member of al-Qaeda, but refused to say what evidence they have to support the pending charges.
Ms. Catterall said Mr. Arar was "very emotional" when she saw him last week in Damascus. She said he was not allowed to speak English in their meeting. Instead, he was forced to speak in Arabic and have his conversation translated.
Ms. Catterall said Mr. Arar broke into tears when she gave him photographs of his family and a drawing made by his six-year-old daughter. "It was a very difficult situation," she said. "There were a lot of tears."
Even though the case has ruffled the feathers of Canadian politicians and diplomats, little headway has been made in efforts to get information from the United States about why it decided to deport Mr. Arar to Syria.
"The whole thing is incredible," Ms. Catterall said. "We were astounded that the U.S. deported him. But now that he's in Syria, there's not much we can do for him."
Mr. Arar's case has become a cause célèbre among Canadian rights groups, who are outraged that the United States sent him to Syria even though he is a Canadian citizen and has lived in this country since he was a teenager.
Amnesty International and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have decried the U.S. action, suggesting that Mr. Arar was deported to Syria because of its lack of civil rights.
"The whole thing is ridiculous," says CAIR's Riad Saloojie. "This man is a Canadian citizen, and the U.S. just made him disappear."
Mr. Arar was arrested at New York's John F. Kennedy airport last Oct. 26 during a stopover while returning to Canada from a family visit in Tunisia. He was interrogated several times and accused of belonging to al-Qaeda, then deported to Syria, even though he was carrying a Canadian passport.
U.S. Immigration officials have cited national security concerns to explain their action.
Mr. Arar, now 31, came to Canada as a 17-year-old, and holds both Canadian and Syrian citizenship. He left Syria in 1987, and became a Canadian citizen in 1991. He worked in Canada as an electronics engineer, specializing in digital telecommunications equipment.
Sources have said that Mr. Arar's woes can be traced to an association with another Syrian-Canadian who also lived in Ottawa and was named in a list of terrorist suspects. That man, sources say, is also in a Syrian jail.
Mr. Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, has not spoken with him since Oct. 3. She said yesterday that she is angry with both the U.S. and Canadian governments over his treatment.
"My husband is not Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden," she said. "He is an ordinary person. What has been done to him is criminal. They've taken him away for no reason, and shut the door. What will my children think when they grow up — what kind of government is it that steals away a father and husband who has never done anything wrong?"
Ms. Mazigh has described her husband's case in Kafkaesque terms. "We were never told anything," she says. "They just took him away. Now this person doesn't exist any more. My husband is gone."
LOL! I did a Google search on this guy, and all I found was sniffing, sobbing and screaming -- by Canadians, Muslims and Amnesty International. No more background information than what's in this article. He is an innocent saint, of course, as are all those that the big, bad U.S. has rounded up (randomly and just for the fun of it) since 9/11. /sarcasm
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