The officials’ action demonstrates Ottawa’s involvement in the U.S.-led “war on terrorism,” including attacks on workers’ and democratic rights. It also spotlights the two governments’ practice of sending prisoners to third countries to face interrogators whose methods include the routine and more or less open use of physical torture. Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen also smeared with the “terrorism” charge, helped to expose this recently when he described weeks of beatings and electric shock treatment in a Syrian jail over the previous year.

On November 27, a Toronto judge ordered a stay of Almrei’s deportation order while the courts review the case.

For more than two years Almrei has been held without charges in solitary confinement on the basis of a “security certificate” issued by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which was given the power to issue such certificates under the 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

“The certificate gives Ottawa sweeping powers of detention,” Reuters reported November 27. CSIS agents allege that Almrei espouses “Islamic extremist” views, was involved in passport forgery, and provided passports for men linked to al-Qaeda.

Brandishing such a “security certificate,” officials are not obliged to reveal charges to the accused at the special hearing that is convened, nor to present him or her with their evidence for the accusations. They can then impose an indefinite jail sentence.

In September, Almrei went on a 39-day hunger strike to protest the lack of heating in his jail cell, citing the cold temperatures he had endured over the previous two winters. He ended the strike after finally being given adequate heat. Five guards had testified in his support at a hearing held on the issue.

The proposal for Almrei’s deportation came in an October 23 report by Citizenship and Immigration official Debra Marmoyle. She wrote that after reviewing the CSIS “evidence,” she had concluded that “Mr Almrei’s presence in Canada poses a direct danger to the lives of Canadians, the lives of citizens of Canada’s allies and international security as a whole.”

Marmoyle said that in her opinion, the Syrian-born man would not face a significant risk of torture on being delivered to the Syrian authorities. “The totality of evidence before me…is inconclusive as to Syria’s treatment of persons suspected of involvement in terrorism,” she wrote.

Maher Arar is one who has a different judgment. On November 25 he issued a statement that read: “Given my experience, and what I lived through, and what I heard happening to other people in prison in Syria, I believe Mr. Almrei would face the same ordeal, if not worse.”

Arar, a Canadian citizen, was arrested at New York’s Kennedy Airport in September 2002. After being denied access to a lawyer or a telephone, and undergoing five days of interrogation, he was deported by U.S. authorities to Syria, where he was jailed for a year. He reported that he had been subject to beatings and torture with electric cables for weeks. He described his cell as having “no light. It was three feet wide. It was six feet deep. It was seven feet high. It had a metal door, with a small opening in the door, which did not let in light…. I spent 10 months and 10 days in that grave.”

Under such duress, Arar says he made a false confession about visiting Afghanistan. His lawyer has stated that CSIS agents visited Syrian authorities after the latter had obtained this “confession.”

U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft and Canadian solicitor-general Wayne Easter discussed Arar’s case at a November 19 meeting, according to the Globe and Mail. The next day, reported the Toronto daily, Ashcroft claimed that the “Bush administration received—and believed—assurances from Syria that it would not torture Maher Arar before deporting the Ottawa man.”

Ashcroft’s statement was at odds with official U.S. government statements that torture is a routine interrogation tool in Syria. An article in the November 5 Washington Post reported that officials “said that the Arar case fits the profile of a covert CIA ‘extraordinary rendition’—the practice of turning over low-level, suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of which are known to torture prisoners.”

The Globe and Mail noted that in a recent report on Syria, the U.S. State Department stated that “torture is common.”

Meanwhile, the Canadian government has deported Manzoor Joyia to Pakistan. Joyia was the last man still in jail of the immigrants arrested in August—20 from Pakistan, and one from India—on suspicion of links to “terrorism.” Two men were deported to Pakistan who had been jailed since May. None of the men were ever charged with any crime in Canada.

Ten of the men have now been deported. Three of those sent back to Pakistan are known to have been arrested there. According to a statement by Project Threadbare, a coalition formed to defend the immigrants, three of those deported underwent 16 hours of interrogation in Pakistan before being released on bail.

The 13 men who were released still face possible deportation. All have applied for refugee status in Canada.  
 
 
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