Both DoJ’s OPR & DHS’ I.G. Reopen Investigation Into CIA Kidnapping & Rendition For Torture of Maher Arar

NEW YORK – A top Department of Homeland Security investigator said Thursday that his office would reopen an inquiry into the case of a Canadian engineer who was sent secretly by the U.S. to his native Syria for interrogation because of suspected ties to Al Qaeda.

Inspector General Richard L. Skinner, who spoke at a congressional hearing in Washington, said new evidence had emerged that U.S. officials may have broken laws related to torture in the case of Maher Arar.Canadian officials have said Arar was tortured while in custody for a year in Syria, where he says he was kept for the bulk of the time in a dark solitary cell slightly larger than a grave.

The Canadian government has acknowledged that it supplied faulty information to the U.S., which probably led to his arrest, and neither Canada nor Syria found any evidence of terrorist links. Last year, Canada apologized to Arar, who now lives in Ottawa, and agreed to pay him almost $10 million in compensation.

The apparent mishandling of his case has resulted in a rare public examination of what is known as “extraordinary rendition,” a covert U.S. practice of sending foreign terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation.

Congressional members called Thursday for a special prosecutor to lead the investigation so criminal charges could be filed.

“Senior American officials ought to go to jail for this,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on constitution, civil rights and civil liberties, who has access to the classified version of a redacted inspector’s general report on the government’s actions. “There was a deliberate plot to abuse the procedures so they could railroad Arar to Syria, where they knew he would be tortured.”

Immigration officials detained Arar in September 2002 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport while he was in transit from Zurich, Switzerland, to Montreal, based on information from the Canadian government.

A four-year U.S. investigation found authorities acted appropriately to deport Arar although normal procedures for deportation were not followed, with a rushed hearing without his attorneys present.

U.S. authorities secretly flew Arar in a small plane to Syria and handed him over with a list of interrogation questions after receiving only “ambiguous” assurances of fair treatment, the report says.

The U.S. has previously said it had independent intelligence that supported the officials’ actions, but it refused to release the classified information.

“I have seen the confidential information, and I can tell you it’s nonsense,” Nadler said. “There is nothing that is incriminating.”

In his testimony, Skinner said it was unclear why the Justice Department overruled the Immigration and Naturalization Service to send Arar to Syria, because his office was not allowed to interview certain officials.

“The INS concluded that Arar was entitled to protection from torture and that returning him to Syria would more likely than not result in his torture,” the report says.

Arar’s attorney, Maria LaHood, said the new evidence, received only a month ago, was an unexpected turn after the four-year inquiry had concluded that the government acted appropriately.

“It confirms that there needs to be a completely independent investigation which has access to all the departments – the Department of Justice, and Immigration – and actually release the whole report,” she said.

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department’s ethics office is reviewing a decision in 2002 by department officials to send a Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was tortured, American officials said Thursday.A Justice Department spokesman, Peter A. Carr, said that its inquiry, by the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was begun in March 2007 and was examining the role of department lawyers in expelling Maher Arar to Syria, which has long been identified by the State Department as habitually using torture on prisoners.The existence of the Justice inquiry was disclosed at a Congressional hearing on Thursday by Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. Skinner told two House subcommittees that the Arar case involved “very questionable” actions by United States government officials and that he “could not rule out” that Mr. Arar was sent to Syria with the intention of having him questioned under torture about possible connections to terrorists.

The testimony, along with a heavily redacted report of a separate investigation by Mr. Skinner, was the fullest accounting to date from the government on the case, which has become a symbol of American excesses in the campaign against terrorism. A film released last year, “Rendition,” was loosely based on the case.

Mr. Skinner also said his office had recently reopened its four-year inquiry into the Arar matter after receiving new information. He said that the new information was classified and that he could not discuss it.

Mr. Arar, a telecommunications engineer who had immigrated to Canada from his native Syria as a teenager, was detained in September 2002 as he tried to change planes at Kennedy International Airport. He had been flying back to Canada from Switzerland. Immigration officers found his name on a terrorist watch list.

After several days of deliberation that involved some high-level administration officials, according to one former White House aide, Mr. Arar was sent to Jordan by immigration officers and turned over to Syrian intelligence.

Mr. Arar, now in his mid-30s, was imprisoned for a year in Syria and beaten with a metal cable before being returned to Canada in 2003.

An exhaustive inquiry by a Canadian commission found that Canadian police and intelligence officials had provided inaccurate information to their American counterparts, erroneously linking Mr. Arar to Al Qaeda. Canadian officials apologized to Mr. Arar and awarded him about $10.3 million.

But the Bush administration has said almost nothing about the case and has continued to bar Mr. Arar from the United States, citing classified information. A Democratic congressman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, said at the hearing that he had reviewed the secret information. “I think it’s nonsense,” he said.

Mr. Skinner’s investigation found that because Mr. Arar’s name was on a watch list, immigration officers properly declined to admit him into the United States, which was technically necessary for him to change planes.

But the investigation challenged the decision to send him to Syria, suggesting that he could have been sent on to Canada or returned to Switzerland, where his flight had originated.

The inspector general’s inquiry, which began in 2003, ran into resistance both inside the Department of Homeland Security and from other agencies, Mr. Skinner said, delaying its progress. He said his department initially sought to keep the entire report secret but agreed to his request to release most of it.