Arar: The Missing Pieces
Once again the odious Maher Arar is in the news, continuing his endless saga of public weeping over his extremely remunerative and allegedly torture-filled stay in a Syrian prison. I would note that I use the word “allegedly” advisedly: so far as has been established, the evidence that Mr. Arar was in fact subjected to “torture” in Syria is entirely circumstantial and based upon the claims of an individual (that is to say, Mr. Arar himself) with an obvious persona and financial interest in exaggerating the hardships that he faced to the greatest possible degree.
As one might expect, Democrats – and Republicans of a certain bent – staged a contest to see who could kow-tow more thoroughly to the alleged victim. To say that the sight filled me with unutterable loathing would be putting it very mildly. My own Grandparents were, despite total innocence, actually deprived of their liberty entirely on account of their race. They had no shady connections or questionable associates. No pattern of suspicious activity. And they were not only imprisoned for substantially longer than Mr. Arar was, but they were also deprived of all of their property. They were unreservedly innocent – but they didn’t get millions of dollars, nor did they spend the rest of their lives attacking the government and undermining its ability to go about its business.
To tell the truth, despite endless news stories – and millions of dollars spent – for some reason we still don’t know the full story about Mr. Arar and why he underwent what he did. The conventional narrative is that, without any basis in fact, the RCMP, CSIS, and American authorities sent an innocent man off to be tortured by the Syrian government – presumably simply on accounts of his religion. The problem I have with this story is that it doesn’t explain why the RCMP, CSIS, and others – who have shown, how shall I say, an unusual solicitude towards those who practice the faith of Mohammed – would single out this particular innocent Moslem for such cruel mistreatment.
On page fifty-one of the factual background to the Arar Commission’s report, we get our first bit of information: Arar first came to the attention when he was observed meeting with Abdullah Almalki on October 12th, 2001. Who is Mr. Almalki? The Arar Commission’s report describes him as a “very religious man.” He also happens to have worked, during the 1990’s, in Afghanistan under the direction of Ahmed Said Khadr, a senior member of al-Qaeda. Of course that doesn’t imply that simply being the employee of a terrorist makes one a terrorist – far from it. One could very well be the employee of a known terrorist, who was at that very time staging terrorist attacks, and be a wholly innocent man. And, most definitely, one can meet with a man who once worked for a terrorist and be wholly innocent of anything altogether.
At roughly the same time, a man named Ahmad Abou El-Maati was also detained in Syria. According to Amnesty International, a well-known source of neocon propaganda, Mr. El-Maati admitted to being acquainted with both Mr. Almalki and Mr. Arar (the former he claimed to have once asked for advice on obtaining a visa, the latter he said he once met at a garage). Later, by Mr. El Maati’s account he claimed – under duress – to have met with both of them in Afghanistan. Given that we can factually establish that such a meeting did not take place, we can ignore the second piece of information. But the first – that Mr. El-Maati, a truck driver by trade, just happened to be acquainted with both Mr. Arar and Mr. Almalki (and, in fact, when shown pictured picked them out) does not seem to be in dispute. More interesting is the fact that Mr. El-Maati’s brother is Amer el-Maati, a known member of al-Qaeda named by the FBI as an individual involved in planning acts of terror against the United States.
Of course, some people believe that Amer el-Maati is innocent. He was defended by Aly Hindy, a long-time friend of the El-Maati family who just happens to be the leader of an Islamic centre founded by a member the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam.
Now, I suppose some will suggest that one can be associated with a suspected terrorist who is the brother of a known terrorist whose family associates with organizations founded by terrorist groups and still be an innocent man. This is undoubtedly true. I am also sure that there will be some who will suggest that the RCMP in some way convinced the Syrians to coerce El-Maati into naming Arar in the first place. However, given that – as late as January of 2002 the RCMP didn’t even have enough evidence to gain a search warrant against Mr. Arar I, for one, remain a sceptic in this area.
And what of those searches? According to the Arar Commission, on January 22nd the RCMP executed searches at seven locations, including the residences of Mr. Almalki, Mr. Almalki’s brother, and Mr. El-Maati. Among the items uncovered during this search were computers, CD’s, and diskettes hidden in walls and rafters (this is all on page seventy-three of the factual background). For some reason, the report fails to disclose the exact content of these items. But, personally, I don’t know that we should read too much into it – plenty of innocent people hide computers in their walls and CD’s in their rafters.
What was on the Arabic tapes and in the Arabic documents that the RCMP found? Shopping lists? Love letters? Or something else. While I, of course, recommend against jumping to any conclusion I would merely say that, if their contents were wholly innocent or otherwise exculpatory, I find it hard to imagine that they would not be discussed.
Significantly, during this period, Almalki’s brother told the RCMP that his brother had a business relationship with Arar. Further, the search uncovered evidence that, “Mr. Almalki and Mr. Arar communicated from time to time, and relied on each other, to some extent, for business information and advice.” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of this. In fact, this information appears to be absolutely innocent.
When interviewed a week later, Arar would claim that he was “not a direct friend” of Almalki, despite their being observed spending time together, despite their communications, and despite the fact that Abdullah Almalki had witnessed the lease on Arar’s apartment when he moved to Ottawa in 1997. Of course, that too could all be perfectly innocent – many innocent people, for one reason or another, provide misleading information to the authorities during terrorism investigations.
Amidst this continuing investigation, Arar and his family left for Tunisia towards the end of June 2002. Arar was detained – returning from Tunisia alone – on September 26, 2002. Not, of course, to suggest that this means anything in and of itself. I’m quite sure that plenty of gainfully employed Moslem men and their families took three month vacations in the Islamic world less than a year after September 11th and then returned, alone – leaving their family with their family. A long sojourn in the Tunisian desert can be, I am assured, both relaxing and innocent.
Still: this was barely a year after September 11th. In such an environment, even the innocent ought to be careful. If you get yourselves shot by running around in front of some police officers who’ve just been shot at while shoving your arm inside your hoodie to simulate the shape of a gun… Well, you can’t expect anyone to feel all that sorry for you.
Of course, at this point the Arar Commission throws a bit of a game-changer into their own narrative. On page one hundred and fourteen of the factual background, they suddenly declare that, ‘It is quite possible that the Americans were investigating Mr. Arar prior to 9/11.” They decline to elaborate upon or further explain this observation – even though, if true, it would mean that the United States had some reason to be suspicious of Arar before his October 12th, 2001 meeting with Almalki was observed.
So, who is Maher Arar really? The honest answer is that we still don’t know. It is, of course, entirely possible that an innocent man just happened to be connected to two separate terrorist suspects – and was possibly already under investigation in the United States. It’s possible that some innocent reason exists for Mr. Arar’s effort to disguise his connection to Almalki. It’s possible that the Arar family simply decided that the summer after 9-11 would be a good time for a three month vacation in Tunisia. None of these things are entirely inconsistent with the image of innocence. But, at the same time, they also weave a web of circumstance the authorities could not possibly responsibly ignore.
Arar wasn’t singled out because of his name. He wasn’t chosen because of his race. He wasn’t victimized on account of his religion. What happened to Arar occurred because he was a man with numerous suspicions connections and jarring background details who behaved in suspicious fashion when asked about them. In my opinion, this holds true simply based upon the facts we know that we know – the known knowns, in Donald Rumsfeld’s words.
That still leaves, of course, the unknown knowns which, for numerous reasons, have yet to be disclosed to us.
First – was Arar under investigation in the United States before 9-11? If so, why?
Second – what was on the material recovered during the searches of January 22nd, 2002? In particular – did the RCMP discover Jihadist material of one sort or another?
Third – is there any undisclosed reason why Canadian authorities were suspicious of Arar in the time after 9-11? In particular, were there any comments that he made which indicated Islamist sympathies which were then reported?
The last two items are, I suspect, the missing pieces here. While I believe that the publicly disclosed information about Arar would have been more than enough for me to act against him were I in a position of authority I have trouble believing this to be the case wherein the Canadian authorities are concerned. Given that we know of the searches – but not of the exact contents of what was recovered and given that we know for a fact that the RCMP were asking people as to what they had heard Arar say about the United States and other things – there is ample reason to suspect that, in addition to the connections already established, that the Canadian government might have had other reasons to be concerned about Arar. Moreover, it makes perfect sense that they would decline to disclose this fact, insofar as revealing that they acted, at least partially, on such information would lead to accusations to Islamophobia, political censorship, and so forth.
It may well be that Mr. Arar is, as his supporters claim, an innocent man. But this is no Hollywood tale.
As one might expect, Democrats – and Republicans of a certain bent – staged a contest to see who could kow-tow more thoroughly to the alleged victim. To say that the sight filled me with unutterable loathing would be putting it very mildly. My own Grandparents were, despite total innocence, actually deprived of their liberty entirely on account of their race. They had no shady connections or questionable associates. No pattern of suspicious activity. And they were not only imprisoned for substantially longer than Mr. Arar was, but they were also deprived of all of their property. They were unreservedly innocent – but they didn’t get millions of dollars, nor did they spend the rest of their lives attacking the government and undermining its ability to go about its business.
To tell the truth, despite endless news stories – and millions of dollars spent – for some reason we still don’t know the full story about Mr. Arar and why he underwent what he did. The conventional narrative is that, without any basis in fact, the RCMP, CSIS, and American authorities sent an innocent man off to be tortured by the Syrian government – presumably simply on accounts of his religion. The problem I have with this story is that it doesn’t explain why the RCMP, CSIS, and others – who have shown, how shall I say, an unusual solicitude towards those who practice the faith of Mohammed – would single out this particular innocent Moslem for such cruel mistreatment.
On page fifty-one of the factual background to the Arar Commission’s report, we get our first bit of information: Arar first came to the attention when he was observed meeting with Abdullah Almalki on October 12th, 2001. Who is Mr. Almalki? The Arar Commission’s report describes him as a “very religious man.” He also happens to have worked, during the 1990’s, in Afghanistan under the direction of Ahmed Said Khadr, a senior member of al-Qaeda. Of course that doesn’t imply that simply being the employee of a terrorist makes one a terrorist – far from it. One could very well be the employee of a known terrorist, who was at that very time staging terrorist attacks, and be a wholly innocent man. And, most definitely, one can meet with a man who once worked for a terrorist and be wholly innocent of anything altogether.
At roughly the same time, a man named Ahmad Abou El-Maati was also detained in Syria. According to Amnesty International, a well-known source of neocon propaganda, Mr. El-Maati admitted to being acquainted with both Mr. Almalki and Mr. Arar (the former he claimed to have once asked for advice on obtaining a visa, the latter he said he once met at a garage). Later, by Mr. El Maati’s account he claimed – under duress – to have met with both of them in Afghanistan. Given that we can factually establish that such a meeting did not take place, we can ignore the second piece of information. But the first – that Mr. El-Maati, a truck driver by trade, just happened to be acquainted with both Mr. Arar and Mr. Almalki (and, in fact, when shown pictured picked them out) does not seem to be in dispute. More interesting is the fact that Mr. El-Maati’s brother is Amer el-Maati, a known member of al-Qaeda named by the FBI as an individual involved in planning acts of terror against the United States.
Of course, some people believe that Amer el-Maati is innocent. He was defended by Aly Hindy, a long-time friend of the El-Maati family who just happens to be the leader of an Islamic centre founded by a member the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam.
Now, I suppose some will suggest that one can be associated with a suspected terrorist who is the brother of a known terrorist whose family associates with organizations founded by terrorist groups and still be an innocent man. This is undoubtedly true. I am also sure that there will be some who will suggest that the RCMP in some way convinced the Syrians to coerce El-Maati into naming Arar in the first place. However, given that – as late as January of 2002 the RCMP didn’t even have enough evidence to gain a search warrant against Mr. Arar I, for one, remain a sceptic in this area.
And what of those searches? According to the Arar Commission, on January 22nd the RCMP executed searches at seven locations, including the residences of Mr. Almalki, Mr. Almalki’s brother, and Mr. El-Maati. Among the items uncovered during this search were computers, CD’s, and diskettes hidden in walls and rafters (this is all on page seventy-three of the factual background). For some reason, the report fails to disclose the exact content of these items. But, personally, I don’t know that we should read too much into it – plenty of innocent people hide computers in their walls and CD’s in their rafters.
What was on the Arabic tapes and in the Arabic documents that the RCMP found? Shopping lists? Love letters? Or something else. While I, of course, recommend against jumping to any conclusion I would merely say that, if their contents were wholly innocent or otherwise exculpatory, I find it hard to imagine that they would not be discussed.
Significantly, during this period, Almalki’s brother told the RCMP that his brother had a business relationship with Arar. Further, the search uncovered evidence that, “Mr. Almalki and Mr. Arar communicated from time to time, and relied on each other, to some extent, for business information and advice.” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with any of this. In fact, this information appears to be absolutely innocent.
When interviewed a week later, Arar would claim that he was “not a direct friend” of Almalki, despite their being observed spending time together, despite their communications, and despite the fact that Abdullah Almalki had witnessed the lease on Arar’s apartment when he moved to Ottawa in 1997. Of course, that too could all be perfectly innocent – many innocent people, for one reason or another, provide misleading information to the authorities during terrorism investigations.
Amidst this continuing investigation, Arar and his family left for Tunisia towards the end of June 2002. Arar was detained – returning from Tunisia alone – on September 26, 2002. Not, of course, to suggest that this means anything in and of itself. I’m quite sure that plenty of gainfully employed Moslem men and their families took three month vacations in the Islamic world less than a year after September 11th and then returned, alone – leaving their family with their family. A long sojourn in the Tunisian desert can be, I am assured, both relaxing and innocent.
Still: this was barely a year after September 11th. In such an environment, even the innocent ought to be careful. If you get yourselves shot by running around in front of some police officers who’ve just been shot at while shoving your arm inside your hoodie to simulate the shape of a gun… Well, you can’t expect anyone to feel all that sorry for you.
Of course, at this point the Arar Commission throws a bit of a game-changer into their own narrative. On page one hundred and fourteen of the factual background, they suddenly declare that, ‘It is quite possible that the Americans were investigating Mr. Arar prior to 9/11.” They decline to elaborate upon or further explain this observation – even though, if true, it would mean that the United States had some reason to be suspicious of Arar before his October 12th, 2001 meeting with Almalki was observed.
So, who is Maher Arar really? The honest answer is that we still don’t know. It is, of course, entirely possible that an innocent man just happened to be connected to two separate terrorist suspects – and was possibly already under investigation in the United States. It’s possible that some innocent reason exists for Mr. Arar’s effort to disguise his connection to Almalki. It’s possible that the Arar family simply decided that the summer after 9-11 would be a good time for a three month vacation in Tunisia. None of these things are entirely inconsistent with the image of innocence. But, at the same time, they also weave a web of circumstance the authorities could not possibly responsibly ignore.
Arar wasn’t singled out because of his name. He wasn’t chosen because of his race. He wasn’t victimized on account of his religion. What happened to Arar occurred because he was a man with numerous suspicions connections and jarring background details who behaved in suspicious fashion when asked about them. In my opinion, this holds true simply based upon the facts we know that we know – the known knowns, in Donald Rumsfeld’s words.
That still leaves, of course, the unknown knowns which, for numerous reasons, have yet to be disclosed to us.
First – was Arar under investigation in the United States before 9-11? If so, why?
Second – what was on the material recovered during the searches of January 22nd, 2002? In particular – did the RCMP discover Jihadist material of one sort or another?
Third – is there any undisclosed reason why Canadian authorities were suspicious of Arar in the time after 9-11? In particular, were there any comments that he made which indicated Islamist sympathies which were then reported?
The last two items are, I suspect, the missing pieces here. While I believe that the publicly disclosed information about Arar would have been more than enough for me to act against him were I in a position of authority I have trouble believing this to be the case wherein the Canadian authorities are concerned. Given that we know of the searches – but not of the exact contents of what was recovered and given that we know for a fact that the RCMP were asking people as to what they had heard Arar say about the United States and other things – there is ample reason to suspect that, in addition to the connections already established, that the Canadian government might have had other reasons to be concerned about Arar. Moreover, it makes perfect sense that they would decline to disclose this fact, insofar as revealing that they acted, at least partially, on such information would lead to accusations to Islamophobia, political censorship, and so forth.
It may well be that Mr. Arar is, as his supporters claim, an innocent man. But this is no Hollywood tale.
posted by Adam Yoshida at
1:12 AM
2 Comments:
Thanks so much for taking the time to do this - I've been trying to figure out the exact sequence of events re M. Arar but haven't had the time to research it. Its so strange in fact that I was wondering if perhaps Arar could be a double agent - with the however many million $$$ he received his payment for something big.
I am not prepared to whitewash this guy. There are too many unanswered question (and there is no proof he was ever tortured). In the Western Standard earlier this year, there was also the question about him owning a gun and his frequent hopping across the Canadian-US border.
Too many unanswered questions. I, for one, do not believe he was ever tortured. That's baloney, and I want my $10 million back. That money belongs to Canadian taxpayers.
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