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Media Release
DOCUMENTS SHOW RCMP MISLEAD COMMISSIONER AND SOLICITOR GENERAL, ADMIT NO CONTROL OVER SHARED INFORMATION and RCMP OFFICERS SAY ARAR WAS NEVER TARGET OF INVESTIGATION
Read it in pdf here
For immediate release 26 November 2020
Newly released RCMP documents reveal further bungling of a national security investigation and confirm Maher Arar as an innocent victim wrongly labelled as a suspected terrorist.
“Yet another piece of the puzzle reveals the inept handling of Maher’s case,” says Marlys Edwardh, Arar’s lawyer. “Still, this is only a small fraction of the puzzle, much of the disclosed documents have been blacked out. Unless the government stops hiding behind the redaction process, we won’t know what really happened.”
The heavily redacted documents, released today by the Arar inquiry, show officers repeatedly gave inaccurate and misleading information to the Commissioner of the RCMP and the Solicitor General of Canada. One misleading statement claimed Arar refused to be interviewed by officers several months before his deportation and imprisonment in Syria. However, the original documentation shows Arar had agreed to be interviewed with his counsel present.
“Senior officials and ministers use the information provided in these memos to make public statements and important decisions,” says Lorne Waldman, co-counsel for Arar. “There can be dire consequences if they are mislead.”
“If misleading information is being provided, meaningful oversight is impossible.”
Alarmingly, the documents also expose a significant problem with information sharing.
Briefing notes to the RCMP’s Commissioner discussing the Arar case say “once the RCMP has provided information to its partners, the resulting dissemination/actions concerning this information is beyond our control.” According to Arar’s lawyers, this indicates that caveats, contrary to prior testimony in the inquiry, do not provide sufficient protection.
Arar says this is upsetting given that information about him was shared with the U.S. despite his being “peripheral” to the RCMP investigation, as is noted in the documents. One RCMP officer was even quoted in transcripts of an internal probe as saying “Mr. Arar was not a primary target of our project. Simply, secondary, as a potential witness or a person of interest.”
What’s also disturbing is the lack of concern by the RCMP for Canadians suffering in Syrian prisons. One document reveals that two months prior to Arar’s rendition to Syria, the RCMP was aware of allegations that another Canadian had been tortured there, however, their sole concern over the issue was in creating a media strategy. What’s more, a briefing note to the Commissioner revealed the RCMP even considered interrogating Arar during his imprisonment.
“It’s very distressing to find out the RCMP knew another Canadian had already been tortured in Syria.” says Arar. “And then they wanted to exploit my suffering as well. Is this how our federal police force should be treating Canadian citizens?”
Arar and his lawyers also question whether all discussion between RCMP and U.S. officials are recorded in these documents, as informal and undocumented exchanges of information were frequently used. They point to transcripts showing a U.S. official called an RCMP officer at his home on a Saturday to discuss Arar, as well as another instance where the RCMP couldn’t even pinpoint when Arar’s lease was given to the U.S.
Arar and his lawyers also denounce the selective disclosures made by the government, saying, for example, only a few internal messages regarding leaks to the media in Arar’s case were disclosed in the newly released documents, however several other leaks were not mentioned at all.
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