Assessing Damage, Urging Action An example was provided to the Panel in Canada about the impact that cooperative endeavours across several countries can have on any one person, and the case is highlighted here, not because it is exceptional (it is not), but because it epitomises the problems that can arise as a result of transnational intelligence cooperation. Case-study: Maher Arar 194 Mr Arar is a telecommunications engineer who lives and works in Canada and holds both Canadian and Syrian citizenship. He was detained at John F Kennedy airport in New York whilst in transit to his home in Canada in September 2002 in the mistaken belief that he was associated with al-Qaeda. Mr Arar was arrested, interrogated without access to counsel and detained for 12 days by the US authorities. Despite his objection that he risked torture on return to Syria, Mr Arar was issued with an order of removal to Syria, where he was held for nearly a year and repeatedly tortured. Mr Arar is certain that he was being interrogated at the behest of the Americans, since he was asked identical questions in the US and Syria. He was finally released when Syria concluded that it could not find any terrorist links. The Canadian Government established a Commission of Inquiry, which cleared Mr Arar’s name, and confirmed that he had been tortured. Canada gave him financial compensation for its role in the affair, on the grounds that it was very likely that the US had acted on information supplied by Canada which had been “inaccurate, portrayed him in an unfairly negative fashion, and over-stated his importance to the RCMP (Canadian police) investigation”. Mr Arar’s attempts to gain redress in the US courts have to date been blocked on the grounds of national security. Apart from the pain and humiliation involved in the process of rendition, and torture, the very fact that Mr Arar was characterised as a suspected terrorist had a devastating impact on him and his family. submission by Florian Geyer, Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), EJP European Union Hearing. See also information provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights, “Foreign interrogators in Guantánamo Bay”, http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/foreign-interrogators-guantanamo-bay. 194 See the summary of the EJP Canada Hearing. 83