Canadian police errors led to man's torture: Concludes an official inquiry

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian police wrongly identified an Ottawa software engineer as an Islamic extremist, prompting U.S. agents to deport him to Syria, where he was tortured, an official inquiry concluded on Monday.

Canadian government -- particularly when it comes to the judiciary and/or high-ranking officials of law enforcement -- is where a dangerous nexus of stupidity, incompetence and general blunder-headedness merge in Canadian life. And the results are always devastating -- to the direct victim and to the confidence of Canadian citizens in the people who oversee our institutions while the rest of us are at work keeping the economy going.

Maher Arar, who holds Canadian and Syrian nationality, was arrested in New York in September 2002 and accused of being an al-Qaeda member. In fact, said the judge who led the probe, all the signs point to the fact Arar was innocent.

I have followed this story since the day it was first reported. Back in September of 2002 I remember wondering over the swiftness with which Maher Arar was deported to Syria, and the sheer spineless impotence of Canadian officials to prevent it from happening. Now, I see they made no attempt to keep it from occurring. Canadian officials, in fact, sped it into happening.

Justice O'Connor's three-volume report castigated the Mounties for slipshod work in the wake of the 9/11 suicide attacks.

It said the Mounties exaggerated Arar's importance and later asked U.S. customs agents to put Arar and his wife on a special watch list, calling them "Islamic extremist individuals suspected of being linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist movement."

To which the keen and sharp-eyed former Canadian Christian Conservative, Stockwell Day, responded: "What happened to Mr Arar is very regrettable. We hope ... never to see this happen again," he told reporters.

Here is the gross, tear-provoking disconnect.

After posting this blog I am going to write to Stockwell Day -- that hater of homosexuals and secularists, that Christian witch doctor, that chrome-eyed blindman -- and demand that the officials who gave the erroneous information that led to Maher Arar being deported by U.S. law enforcement be fired from their jobs and prosecuted for their gross negligence and criminal distortion of the sketchy facts at their disposal.

It's terrible that Mr. Arar underwent this ordeal. Syria remains a blight of cruelty and treachery; a junkyard dog as a nation state. But Canada cannot hold itself to be very much better than Ole Septic Syria if it does not punish the posturing police who thought they'd impress their American counterparts by sexing up the mundane facts of a law-abiding citizen's file.

Where were Canadian diplomats while this outrage was occurring? Where were Mr. Arar's MPs? Where were all of the bleeding hearts who bend over backwards to welcome miscreants and malcontents into this country, while shunning the travesty that befell Mr. Arar?

Yes, I know, the answer is to drink Ottawa tapwater for a calendar year and all of these mysteries will suddenly unravel for me. Not even cyncism or sarcasm can ease the rawness of this outrage.

Canada: Bureaucrap as Nation State.