VANITY: The Other Side of Maher Arar

The Freedom Institute ^ | November 10, 2003 | Adam Yoshida

[ayoshida]

I’m sick to death of watching everyone shed tears over the supposed injustice done on Maher Arar, the Syrian-Canadian dual citizen who was deported to Syria by the United States, held there for a year, and tortured. I grant you that it is possible that Mr. Arar may be a victim of an injustice. But I don’t really believe that to be the case. In all the weeping over Arar’s ordeal, we have forgotten the main question: was he a member or supporter of al-Qaeda?

This question has never been answered. All we have is Arar’s denial which, quite frankly, I do not believe. Arar fits the profile of a terrorist. He’s young, Moslem, Western-educated, and from an engineering background. A known member of al-Qaeda witnessed Arar’s signature on the lease of his Ottawa apartment.

How many Canadian Moslems travel through the United States each year? Ten thousand? Fifty thousand? One hundred thousand? Whatever the number is, it is large. How many of these Moslems have been sent to the Middle East because of their suspected links to terror? One: Maher Arar. This man wasn’t captured as a result of a random whim, if the United States (and seemingly the Canadian government as well) went through this much trouble, they must have had a good reason to do so.

I’m also suspicious of the circumstances of which Arar was nabbed. He was captured on his way back from a family vacation to Tunisia, a known hot-bed of al-Qaeda activity. He had left his family behind in Tunisia, travelling back alone. It was some time before his wife and children came back to Canada. I am left to wonder: just what was he coming back here for, and was his family even supposed to come back?

The United States isn’t operating blindly in this war. I’ve long-advocated that they need to detain and intern all of those suspected not only of being al-Qaeda members, but also those who are supporters or sympathetic to it or its aims. It has not done this. The al-Qaeda members being detained are active, many of them have trained in terrorist camps, and all of them are dangerous. For the US Government to take extraordinary action as it did here, something must have been up.

Maher Arar claims that he didn’t even know the al-Qaeda member who witnessed his lease. He says that he was just the brother of a friend, who was sent over to perform the delicate task of watching a stroke of a pen and making one of his own shortly thereafter. I find this to be an unlikely story. In Syria, Arar signed a confession in which he admitted to attending an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, a confession he has since recanted. But has Arar ever been to Afghanistan or Pakistan? Where was he at the times he specified in his confession? These questions need to be asked, but are not because our media is more interested in milking this story to score anti-American points.

Why was Arar in Tunisia? It’s been reported that he was there for a family vacation, but I wonder. Is Tunisia exactly a vacation hot spot? Where did he visit in Tunisia? What exactly as Arar’s views on the War? What does he have to say about Osama Bin Laden?

One of the reasons why Arar said that he could not be sent back to Syria is that a relative of his was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a major Islamist organization which served as a predecessor to al-Qaeda. I wonder, how close was Arar to that relative, and did he have links to the Muslim Brotherhood?

Before we cry of Maher Arar, we need to know the truth about him. If he was an al-Qaeda member or supporter, I don’t really care what happened to him. My only regret in that case would be that he is still alive, my only question: why is he now free?

Don’t try and tell me that he’s obviously innocent because the Syrians let him go and the Canadians have let him roam free. It’s equally possible that he was only a minor member of al-Qaeda and the Syrians decided to let him go because keeping him wasn’t worth the trouble while the Canadian government has let him go because it has a decidedly unserious attitude towards terror.

I could be wrong. Maher Arar could be a perfectly nice guy who despises al-Qaeda. I don’t believe that, but it is possible. If that is the case, he is more a victim of his co-religionists, who are seeking to murder tens of millions of innocents than he is of the American government, which is trying to defend them.

But we won’t learn the real truth about Arar until the media abandons its illusion that every member of a minority group crying about injustice has had one done to them. Maher Arar might whine that, because of this, he will always be under a cloud of suspicion. He’s right: I am suspicious of him. There is more to this than you’ll hear from Amnesty International or on the CBC.

[Peter Libra]

This is of course something that should be read by Canadians. First of all, I would be fair by sitting back and trying to sift just what Mr Arar went through. Next, why?.Undisputably, if he was treated in this way unjustly, or because of a flimsy suspicion, it was wrong.

Now let me play the devils advocate. Independent medical specialists should, if they have not, carefully examine Mr Arar. This would include MRI or cat scan. I must say Mr Arar looked quite well in interviews- not to say that he is though.

Here however is the frightening aspect of Canadian political correctness. Three cheers for the internet. Many, many people have jumped on the bandwagon. I see them and through them. Yes, if Syrian-Canadian, I respect your concern. The others, after they have puffed up their outrage,probably do this. Go off to their luxury condominiums, apartments, wherever, hoist an adult beverage and do what they usually do.

The awful thing is that the raft of onesided exhortations, seem programmed. To dissent might be political or professional suicide. Then they talk of other countries and their lack of freedom of expression.