Frankly, I have no sympathy for Maher Arar – and I don’t think that he deserves a single damned cent from the Canadian taxpayer for his “ordeal.” Amid all of the crocodile tears shed for him, we’ve forgotten an important – vital, even – principle: just because he’s seemingly not guilty of being a terrorist doesn’t make him innocent either.

If Arar is a completely innocent man – not a terrorist, or a sympathizer – then, yes, he should be compensated. But I have yet to see any evidence which proves this one way or another. Indeed, the evidence suggests that there’s a silent and virtually unspoken reason why Arar became the target of scrutiny and why he was disappeared into Syria.

Before we pay him anything, there are some questions which ought to be answered.

My suspicion for quite some time has been that Arar was an Islamist – that is to say, that he’d made comments sympathetic to al-Qaeda and, quite possibly, possessed Jihadist material. He was an Islamist, but not a terrorist. In other words: he was a fellow-traveller, perhaps a little more. It may be true, then, that he wasn’t an active member of al-Qaeda – but that isn’t the whole truth.

For example, one co-worker noted that Arar was often critical of Israel. And this, I would add, was a Jewish co-worker. Who knows what he said to others? The RCMP, scared as hell of being accused of being anti-Moslem, aren’t saying anything. And the official report on the matter – so detailed that I’m surprised that it doesn’t track what the people involved had for breakfast each day – is also silent.

The report of the Arar Commission notes that the RCMP recovered a virtual treasure trove of data from the homes of Arar's associates in January of 2002 – including many Arabic videotapes and documents – yet remains silent on their content other than to note that the videotapes they recovered “included family videos.”

And, of course, Arar's home was never searched, nor was the data on his computer examined.*

Intriguingly, they note – on page 73 of the Arar Commission’s report – that they recovered CDs, disks, and hard drives that were, “hidden, either in walls or rafters.” One wonders just was on all of that recovered media. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the idea of having a bunch of storage media hidden in the walls and rafters of your home strikes me as, well, kind of suspicious.

And, of course, there’s the not-so-small matter of why Arar came to the attention of Canadian authorities in the first place: his close association with two individuals with far more alarming and obvious ties to terrorism: Abdullah Almalki and Ahmad El Maati.

Almalki worked in Afghanistan for Human Concern International when it was run by Ahmed Said Khadr, the notorious al-Qaeda financer. By the time authorities became seriously interested in Arar, he disappeared to Malaysia.

El Maati was in Afghanistan in the 1990’s, where he trained with what he described as “US-backed mujahideen” against the Russians, returning to Canada in 1998. Or, rather, so he claimed. That the Arar Commission repeats this blatant lie without blinking (the Russians were out of Afghanistan before 1990, let alone 1998) an eye suggests that the commission was determined to be blind.

His is a particularly interesting case. Letters from the Canadian Government to his brother (and his brother’s health card) were found by Northern Alliance troops in a suspected al-Qaeda safehouse in Afghanistan. More to the point – he implicated Arar as being involved in a terrorist plot way back in November of 2001, before the Canadian government had paid any serious attention to him.

Arar was observed spending an afternoon with Almalki – an individual who was also listed as his emergency contact on an apartment lease.

The data found in the RCMP's searches also found that Arar and Almalki were in communication with eachother, contrary to Arar's claims, when he was interrogated, that Almalki's connection with him was limited (that he'd signed the lease, for example, because his brother wasn't available).

Also suspicious: Arar was returning from Tunisia – after a three month visit (from July through the end of September). He’d already been to Tunisia in early 2002, allegedly to visit his wife’s relatives. One wonders why (or how, for that matter) the guy spent more than three months out of nine in a foreign country.

Interestingly, the reports from the RCMP to the US authorities seem to often characterize Arar (and his wife) as “Islamic extremists.” No one seems to have bothered to see what evidence there is to back up this charge (what Mosque did they go to? What were their other associations? Had they given money to Islamist groups?).

Two more points of interest from the report. First – it notes that Canadian officials believe that the United States was conducting an investigation of Arar prior to September 11th. Second, it notes that Arar was under American investigation in February of 2002. What triggered those investigations? No one’s saying.

What do we have when all is said and done? We have a very suspicious picture.

We’ve got a guy with links to suspected terrorists, with various documents hidden in his walls, travelling abroad for suspicious lengths of time, and already under investigation by American authorities. He’s been implicated in a terrorist plot by another possible terrorist.

Don’t you think, under the circumstances, that it was advisable to learn more?

If Arar was provably innocent: if he was a patriotic, hockey-loving Canadian, then his treatment would be the outrage it is often portrayed as in the media. But, from my vantage point, it’s looking more like good, old-fashioned, common sense than anything else.

If Arar was a Jihadist sympathizer – and a great deal of circumstantial evidence suggests that he was – then he deserves neither our sympathy or our money.

* The initial version of this post stated, in error, that the hidden material was found in Arar's home.