Speaker.
Posted by Bill Bourlet
Muriel Groves introduced our speaker, Murray Morrow, Executive Director for the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. The BCCLA, founded in 1963, is the oldest non-profit civil liberties group in Canada.
Mr. Morrow described the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian/Syrian dual citizen who was falsely accused of terrorism and taken by American authorities from a Montreal-bound airplane in New York, then deported to Syria where he was kept in a 3x6x7 foot cell and tortured for a year before being released. Subsequent evidence has show that Mr. Arar is totally innocent of all of the charges that were brought against him.
Mr. Morrow informed us that the O'Connor report, the result of a commission of inquiry established after Mr. Arar's return to Canada, has found that the RCMP provided "inaccurate and misleading" information to US authorities which resulted in Mr. Arar's detention and deportation to Syria. Among other things, he was accused of being a member of Al Quaeda and to have visited Afghanistan. Neither charge was true. Further, the RCMP failed to cooperate in writing a letter to Syrian authorities that would have exonerated him from the charges against him and did nothing to correct the record when Mr. Arar returned to Canada, in spite of knowing that they had no direct evidence against him.
If you are curious to learn more about this case, you can access the following websites:
www.ararcommission.ca
www.maherarar.ca.
The latter contains Mr. Arar's own report of his experiences.
The O'Connor Commission made 23 recommendations to the federal government in the wake of these events, including financial compensation for Mr. Arar, who can no longer work in the field in which he was trained. The federal government has said it would carry out all 22 recommendations. If you would like to encourage them to do so, you can contact:
The Prime Minister at
pm@pm.gc.ca
Stockwell Day at
day.s@parl.gc.ca
After numerous questions, our speaker was thanked by Susan Burak, who noted that a donation had been made in his name to the Rotary Foundation.
The meeting was adjourned at 1:30
Notes this week by Bruce Campbell
Did you know that if you click on Pictures they will double in size? (BB.)
If you are curious to learn more about this case, you can access the following websites:
www.ararcommission.ca
www.maherarar.ca.
The latter contains Mr. Arar's own report of his experiences.
The O'Connor Commission made 23 recommendations to the federal government in the wake of these events, including financial compensation for Mr. Arar, who can no longer work in the field in which he was trained. The federal government has said it would carry out all 22 recommendations. If you would like to encourage them to do so, you can contact:
The Prime Minister at
pm@pm.gc.ca
Stockwell Day at
day.s@parl.gc.ca
After numerous questions, our speaker was thanked by Susan Burak, who noted that a donation had been made in his name to the Rotary Foundation.
The meeting was adjourned at 1:30
Notes this week by Bruce Campbell
Did you know that if you click on Pictures they will double in size? (BB.)