Should Harper apologise to Arar?

[killjoy]

Um Geff not for nothing but all his "associations" with al Qaeda members turned out to be 100% false, eh? The RCMP completely brain-farted.

Why was Arar on our government's watch list? Because "multiple international intelligence agencies" had linked him to terrorist groups. How many agencies? Two. What had they reported? Not much.

The Syrians believed that Arar might be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because a cousin of his mother's had been, nine years earlier, long after Arar moved to Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the lease on Arar's apartment had been witnessed by a Syrian- born Canadian who was believed to know an Egyptian Canadian whose brother was allegedly mentioned in an al Qaeda document.

That's it. That's all they had: guilt by the most remote of computer- generated associations.

Talk about reaching to get to a conclusion. Hardly his fault. No al Qaeda "friends". No associations at all, just a brown guy.

On this evidence you could currently be "associating with al Qaeda terrorist groups" by simply walking into your corner store and chatting up the guy behind the counter.

Also the problem still remains: are Canadian citizens subject to the 'suspicions' or 'evidence' of Syria or the US, or our own?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...INGPQ40MET1.DTL

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[M.Dancer]

No, Arar's own country should apologize to him.

Yes of course, but should it be Harper, Martin or the GG who do it?

[bk59]

Simple solution, don't be friends with terrorist associates. End of story. You won't be deported.

What a ridiculous sentiment. As has been pointed out above, the connection to terrorists was pretty thin. On that basis we should just toss out our freedom of association? If you do nothing illegal then why should you be held responsible for an associate's illegal actions?

By your logic, if you own a convenience store and you end up on a first name basis with one of your customers who comes in every day, and then that customer goes out and commits a terrorist act, you should be charged as a terrorist. After all, you were clearly associating on a regular basis with a terrorist.

[killjoy]

What a ridiculous sentiment.

Given the amount of sheer BS that has been flung about by this case I'm willing to give geoffrey the benefit of doubt.

Who knows what he may have read and had every right to believe?

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[g_bambino]

I think the tradition you are thinking of is Parliamentary sovereignty which says that a particular session of Parliament is not bound by any prior acts (i.e. it can change or repeal any laws that it wants). That isn't the same as saying that "the government" is not continuous. Ministries continue on, no matter who is in charge.

Because of this, my opinion is that if someone in the government screwed up, then Arar should get an apology from the PM. It does not matter who the PM is now, or who the PM was at the time. Just look at the Chinese Head Tax issue. Harper apologized for that, but no one in their right mind is going to say that Harper had anything to do with the tax.

Yes, I suppose Parliamentary sovereignty is what I was thinking of. I was also incorrect to include the Parliament as a part of the Government. The Government is the Crown and its Council (which, in essence, means the Queen (or the GG) and the Queen's Privy Council (or the Ministry (Cabinet) at its head)), and these two things constitutionally exist in perpetuity. Thus, I guess, as the current prime minister in the Ministry, Harper could apologize on behalf of the Government - meaning he'd be apologizing on behalf of the Crown in Council.

But, should the Crown (and, therefore, the entire State) be held responsible for what happened to Arar? The whole point of the Crown almost always following the advice of its ministers is that the ministers are therefore responsible for the actions of the Crown. In this case, then, shouldn't it be Bill Graham, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, who should apologize, and not the Crown itself (whether through Harper's mouth or not), Harper personally, or any of the other present ministers? Before Judge O'Connor revealed that the RCMP had blocked Foreign Affairs' attempts to have Arar returned to Canada, and that the RCMP had witheld crucial facts from government officials, Graham had already apologized, in June of 2005, for his inability to have Arar freed.

I don't believe Harper should have offered an apology for the Head Tax either. An acknowledgement of injustice, and compensation, certainly, but the Crown, and, by extension, the Canadian people, shouldn't be held as guilty, and thus responsible, for the actions and/or complacency of our ancestors (if they were even here at the time). This was the path taken with the Acadians who demanded an apology for the deportation of their ancestors in 1763 - the Governor General issued a Royal Proclamation acknowledging the exile (and creating a day of remembrance), but no specific apology was offered.

[bk59]

What a ridiculous sentiment.

Given the amount of sheer BS that has been flung about by this case I'm willing to give geoffrey the benefit of doubt.

Who knows what he may have read and had every right to believe?

I agree that there is a lot of information and misinformation floating around about this case. And in my opinion everyone has the right to interpret that (mis)information however they want.

The statement that I was objecting to had nothing to do with this case specifically. The statement implied that simply knowing a terrorist was grounds to be punished. That pretty much goes against the whole principle that you actually have to do something wrong in order to be sanctioned. Simply knowing someone isn't a good enough reason to deport or imprison someone.

Of course, having said that, geoffrey is entitled to believe whatever he wants.

[killjoy]

Simply knowing someone isn't a good enough reason to deport or imprison someone.

I hear ya. I have a corner store I go to all the time. It's run by a guy who fled Sri Lanka. I've talked with him. He's no 'terrorist'. He simply wants to raise his kids in a safe place and he confesses that at first his plan was to eventually go back home but that he'd made so many friends here and his children have grown here that he figures he's Canadian now and that's how he wants it to stay.

Even so he sends money to family back home. Now if by happenstance one of his relatives friends or friends of a friend happened to be a member of Tamil Tigers, well did I just "fund terrorism" when I bought my milk there? Am I ‘associated’ with them? If I was brown instead of lily white could I find myself in a Sri Lankian jail tomorrow?

I think given the state of alarm at the time there was probably a point where someone thought to themselves, “Well heck, if we’re wrong about this we could just blame the US and Bush...that'll work.”

I think it backfired.

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[Leafless]

Um Geff not for nothing but all his "associations" with al Qaeda members turned out to be 100% false, eh? The RCMP completely brain-farted.

Mahar Arar WAS NOT found innocent in a COURT OF LAW but rather innocent from the results of a LIMITED inquiry.

Please recognize the difference.

[Charles Anthony]

Mahar Arar WAS NOT found innocent in a COURT OF LAW but rather innocent from the results of a LIMITED inquiry.

Nor was he assumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. THAT is a more important difference to note.

[Topaz]

Let me put it this way, do you really think the PM would apologize to any Canadian, when he won't even lower the flag to the dead Canadians coming home for the last time?

[Leafless]

Mahar Arar WAS NOT found innocent in a COURT OF LAW but rather innocent from the results of a LIMITED inquiry.

Nor was he assumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. THAT is a more important difference to note.

He was detained in the U.S. and they deported him back to his country of birth Syria for security reasons.

The laws in the U.S. are a reversal of 'innocent until proven guilty'.

The point I find difficult is how the Canadian government is suppose to protect someone who is also a citizen of Syria who's laws are totally different than Canada's that include according to Mr. Arar, torture.

Why would Mr.Arar retain citizenship to a country that could be and according to Mr. Arar was a danger to his well being.

[Leafless]

Well, it looks like the U.S. won't be apoligizing to Maher Arar and for that matter doesn't even mention in a letter to Foreign Affairs minister Peter MacKay, that he will neither have his name removed from the U.S. watch list.

Ah, the sensibilities of the U.S. concerning Mr. Arar's unreliable, unproven information should be a 'wake up call' to all undemocratic pandering socialist, who are ready at any moment to sell Canada's national security system down the sewer in the name preserving and supporting it's flawed, racist, official multicultural policy.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news...dc3&k=48326