By Dick Field
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
The Canadian left wing media of little conscience continues on its dangerous, overly zealous way of accusing the RCMP of incompetence and making Mr. Arar a pathetic downtrodden victim of our security police. Before everybody falls down on their knees in supplication and apologizes all over the place to Mr. Arar, perhaps we should all take a closer look at the situation.
First, and exceedingly strange, is the fact that our media has persuaded the public that Mr. Arar is an ordinary immigrant Canadian of Syrian descent. No, he is not an ordinary Canadian like most of us. He is a citizen of Canada and a citizen of Syria. For months this writer has tried verify this fact by listening to every newscast and reading every newspaper possible in order to find out if Mr. Arar was indeed a dual citizen but no luck, nary a mention. Why the silence? Why the mystery? Apparently, the fact was discussed early in the O'Connor Inquiry and then dropped, so there is no excuse for the media.
Some Canadians think that even if a person is the citizen of another country, being a Canadian citizen at the same time is perfectly OK. Their view is that the person is a Canadian citizen and as such, Canada is responsible for his treatment even in his own birth country in which he still holds citizenship. Is this not a very strange concept, particularly when the laws and practices in that person's other country may be radically different from our own? If the two countries laws are very different then which laws apply? Surely we would not allow that other country's laws to apply to the dual citizen while residing in Canada?
When Canada saw fit to give Mr. Arar Canadian citizenship, he had ample opportunity to drop his Syrian citizenship, but he chose not to cancel it. Canada did not require him to do so. Why not? Is Canada therefore partly responsible for Mr. Arar's bad decision by allowing him to retain his Syrian citizenship?
Mr. Arar knew the torture practices in his own country, so we should ask Mr. Arar why he risked keeping his Syrian citizenship. Certainly by retaining his Syrian citizenship, Mr. Arar must be partly responsible for his own misfortunes, even if he is totally innocent.
Before he was arrested at the John F. Kennedy Airport, New York in 2002, Mr. Arar was under suspicion by our authorities. It turns out, according to the O'Connor Inquiry, that those suspicions were unfounded. Based on these findings, Mr. Arar has publicly declared that he has been found innocent and given a "Not Guilty" verdict!
By what right does he make that claim? The O'Connor Inquiry was not a court of law. It was a legally constituted inquiry. There was no tough cross-examination of witnesses as required in a court of law, no challenging of evidence, no introduction of facts as yet unknown etc. At best, Mr. Arar has been freed of taint and is able to resume his life in Canada. The RCMP have apologized to him, the Parliament of Canada has apologized to him, which means that all Canadians have been forced to apologize to Mr. Arar.
Now let's look at things from an American anti-terrorism official's point of view. They received information from the RCMP that cast suspicion on Mr. Arar. When he arrived in New York, the US authorities apprehended him. Apparently, the RCMP had forwarded the corrected information (their information was incorrect) to the US authorities before Mr. Arar was sent back to Syria but the information was not acted upon.
However, the American authorities knew that Mr. Arar, as well as having Canadian citizenship, was a citizen of Syria, his birth country. The Americans, still smarting from the 9/11, 2001 disaster and the near miss in December 1999, when yet another terrorist from Canada, Ahmed Ressam, an Algierian, had been luckily arrested on the west coast by a US border officer with a trunk load of explosives in his car. Ressam was on the way to blow up the Los Angeles airport. They also knew that Ressam had conspired with his bomb maker when they both lived in Montreal.
It doesn't take a genius to know what they would decide to do, incorrect information or not, which is what any of us would do; send him back to his home country, Syria, ASAP. Never mind rendition, just get him as far from the US and Canada as possible. A contributing factor may have also have been that Mr. Arar had just arrived in New York from Algeria, another terrorist producing country and the home country of Ahmed Ressam.
One may sympathize with Mr. Arar and his family. This writer certainly does or did, even though he is partially the author of his own misfortune but when we hear that he is suing Canada, which made every effort to get him out of Syria, for $400,000,000 that's bordering on financial terrorism. Four hundred million or almost half a billion of our hard-earned taxed dollars, that is more than a bit much to take! This is a loyal Canadian?
This looks like nothing more than selfish revenge upon all of us!
Well perhaps this is just a negotiating amount, a highball amount? Who's kidding whom? This ridiculous sum tells any thinking person that there is another agenda here and it is not about fairness. This man has lost this writer's sympathy.
Just to put things in perspective, David Milgaard, a real Canadian citizen, not a divided-loyalty citizen, spent 23 years in our steel and concrete penitentiaries, almost a third of a lifetime before he was declared falsely imprisoned and innocent by means of DNA evidence. He and his family suffered years in humiliation, financial and legal drain, the frustration of being innocent and everyone denying your word. Suffering God knows what indignities in our prisons and suffering psychological trauma of the worst kind. Twenty three years! And all throughout those many years his mother waged a valiant and frustrating battle, even to get his case reviewed or finding anyone in government to listen. That horror far exceeds anything done by Syria to Mr. Arar.
Compared to the suffering of Mr. Arar, Mr. Milgaard should have sued for a billion dollars! Mr. Arar's one year imprisonment, in his own "other" country, with no permanent damage caused by the torture he claimed was inflicted upon him pales by comparison.
Mr. Milgaard wound up receiving compensation just one fortieth of the $400,000,000 amount for which Mr. Arar is suing our country? Mr. Milgaard received a paltry $10,000,000 for his 23 years in jail and some officials thought that was too much! There are a number of other Canadians who also spent many years in jail for murder, later to be found innocent and released. None received compensation even close to Mr. Milgaard's settlement.
So overall, it would seem that Mr. Arar needs to get a dose of reality! And we should take another more careful look at what we are dealing with here.
Our morally defunct and brain-dead leftist media and many of our left wing politicians need to smarten up and tell the people the facts of the case. It might also be wiser for those of us who see Mr. Arar as a "martyr," as portrayed by the media, to put ourselves in the shoes of the US and Canadian authorities who were at that time and now today desperately trying to protect us from fanatic mass murderers.
This citizen thinks that the very least our government should require of Mr. Arar is to cancel his Syrian citizenship and we should refuse to negotiate with him until he becomes a real 100% Canadian. At that time, and not before, Mr. Harper would also be justified in apologizing to him and his family and offer him some settlement in keeping with that of other wrongly convicted 100% Canadians.
Maybe too, the leftist mass media pundits, never short of politically motivated opinions, should also start asking why Canada gives dual citizenship to the citizens of countries whose laws and police practices are so vastly different from our own. And while they are at it they might also question why citizenship is given at all to any person applying from terrorist-producing countries. Then again, maybe it is up to all of us to ask these questions of our political leaders, especially in these critically dangerous times.
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
The Canadian left wing media of little conscience continues on its dangerous, overly zealous way of accusing the RCMP of incompetence and making Mr. Arar a pathetic downtrodden victim of our security police. Before everybody falls down on their knees in supplication and apologizes all over the place to Mr. Arar, perhaps we should all take a closer look at the situation.
First, and exceedingly strange, is the fact that our media has persuaded the public that Mr. Arar is an ordinary immigrant Canadian of Syrian descent. No, he is not an ordinary Canadian like most of us. He is a citizen of Canada and a citizen of Syria. For months this writer has tried verify this fact by listening to every newscast and reading every newspaper possible in order to find out if Mr. Arar was indeed a dual citizen but no luck, nary a mention. Why the silence? Why the mystery? Apparently, the fact was discussed early in the O'Connor Inquiry and then dropped, so there is no excuse for the media.
Some Canadians think that even if a person is the citizen of another country, being a Canadian citizen at the same time is perfectly OK. Their view is that the person is a Canadian citizen and as such, Canada is responsible for his treatment even in his own birth country in which he still holds citizenship. Is this not a very strange concept, particularly when the laws and practices in that person's other country may be radically different from our own? If the two countries laws are very different then which laws apply? Surely we would not allow that other country's laws to apply to the dual citizen while residing in Canada?
When Canada saw fit to give Mr. Arar Canadian citizenship, he had ample opportunity to drop his Syrian citizenship, but he chose not to cancel it. Canada did not require him to do so. Why not? Is Canada therefore partly responsible for Mr. Arar's bad decision by allowing him to retain his Syrian citizenship?
Mr. Arar knew the torture practices in his own country, so we should ask Mr. Arar why he risked keeping his Syrian citizenship. Certainly by retaining his Syrian citizenship, Mr. Arar must be partly responsible for his own misfortunes, even if he is totally innocent.
Before he was arrested at the John F. Kennedy Airport, New York in 2002, Mr. Arar was under suspicion by our authorities. It turns out, according to the O'Connor Inquiry, that those suspicions were unfounded. Based on these findings, Mr. Arar has publicly declared that he has been found innocent and given a "Not Guilty" verdict!
By what right does he make that claim? The O'Connor Inquiry was not a court of law. It was a legally constituted inquiry. There was no tough cross-examination of witnesses as required in a court of law, no challenging of evidence, no introduction of facts as yet unknown etc. At best, Mr. Arar has been freed of taint and is able to resume his life in Canada. The RCMP have apologized to him, the Parliament of Canada has apologized to him, which means that all Canadians have been forced to apologize to Mr. Arar.
Now let's look at things from an American anti-terrorism official's point of view. They received information from the RCMP that cast suspicion on Mr. Arar. When he arrived in New York, the US authorities apprehended him. Apparently, the RCMP had forwarded the corrected information (their information was incorrect) to the US authorities before Mr. Arar was sent back to Syria but the information was not acted upon.
However, the American authorities knew that Mr. Arar, as well as having Canadian citizenship, was a citizen of Syria, his birth country. The Americans, still smarting from the 9/11, 2001 disaster and the near miss in December 1999, when yet another terrorist from Canada, Ahmed Ressam, an Algierian, had been luckily arrested on the west coast by a US border officer with a trunk load of explosives in his car. Ressam was on the way to blow up the Los Angeles airport. They also knew that Ressam had conspired with his bomb maker when they both lived in Montreal.
It doesn't take a genius to know what they would decide to do, incorrect information or not, which is what any of us would do; send him back to his home country, Syria, ASAP. Never mind rendition, just get him as far from the US and Canada as possible. A contributing factor may have also have been that Mr. Arar had just arrived in New York from Algeria, another terrorist producing country and the home country of Ahmed Ressam.
One may sympathize with Mr. Arar and his family. This writer certainly does or did, even though he is partially the author of his own misfortune but when we hear that he is suing Canada, which made every effort to get him out of Syria, for $400,000,000 that's bordering on financial terrorism. Four hundred million or almost half a billion of our hard-earned taxed dollars, that is more than a bit much to take! This is a loyal Canadian?
This looks like nothing more than selfish revenge upon all of us!
Well perhaps this is just a negotiating amount, a highball amount? Who's kidding whom? This ridiculous sum tells any thinking person that there is another agenda here and it is not about fairness. This man has lost this writer's sympathy.
Just to put things in perspective, David Milgaard, a real Canadian citizen, not a divided-loyalty citizen, spent 23 years in our steel and concrete penitentiaries, almost a third of a lifetime before he was declared falsely imprisoned and innocent by means of DNA evidence. He and his family suffered years in humiliation, financial and legal drain, the frustration of being innocent and everyone denying your word. Suffering God knows what indignities in our prisons and suffering psychological trauma of the worst kind. Twenty three years! And all throughout those many years his mother waged a valiant and frustrating battle, even to get his case reviewed or finding anyone in government to listen. That horror far exceeds anything done by Syria to Mr. Arar.
Compared to the suffering of Mr. Arar, Mr. Milgaard should have sued for a billion dollars! Mr. Arar's one year imprisonment, in his own "other" country, with no permanent damage caused by the torture he claimed was inflicted upon him pales by comparison.
Mr. Milgaard wound up receiving compensation just one fortieth of the $400,000,000 amount for which Mr. Arar is suing our country? Mr. Milgaard received a paltry $10,000,000 for his 23 years in jail and some officials thought that was too much! There are a number of other Canadians who also spent many years in jail for murder, later to be found innocent and released. None received compensation even close to Mr. Milgaard's settlement.
So overall, it would seem that Mr. Arar needs to get a dose of reality! And we should take another more careful look at what we are dealing with here.
Our morally defunct and brain-dead leftist media and many of our left wing politicians need to smarten up and tell the people the facts of the case. It might also be wiser for those of us who see Mr. Arar as a "martyr," as portrayed by the media, to put ourselves in the shoes of the US and Canadian authorities who were at that time and now today desperately trying to protect us from fanatic mass murderers.
This citizen thinks that the very least our government should require of Mr. Arar is to cancel his Syrian citizenship and we should refuse to negotiate with him until he becomes a real 100% Canadian. At that time, and not before, Mr. Harper would also be justified in apologizing to him and his family and offer him some settlement in keeping with that of other wrongly convicted 100% Canadians.
Maybe too, the leftist mass media pundits, never short of politically motivated opinions, should also start asking why Canada gives dual citizenship to the citizens of countries whose laws and police practices are so vastly different from our own. And while they are at it they might also question why citizenship is given at all to any person applying from terrorist-producing countries. Then again, maybe it is up to all of us to ask these questions of our political leaders, especially in these critically dangerous times.
Former editor of the Voice of Canadian Committees and the Montgomery Tavern Society, Dick Field is a World War II veteran, who served in combat with the Royal Canadian Artillery, Second Division, 4th Field Regiment in Belgium, Holland and Germany as a 19-year-old gunner and forward observation signaller working with the infantry. Field also spent six months in the occupation army in Northern Germany and after the war became a commissioned officer in the Armoured Corps, spending a further six years in the Reserves. Dick can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com
