Dems taking on RenditionFollow

The first flaw is that he wasn't extradited. He was deported.

Also, there's some hidden bits that are glaring in their absense. The US government consulted with the Canadian government prior to "deporting" him to Syria. Reading between the lines, Canada presumably said something like: "We don't want him either!". We can guess why that was done, but it's pretty clear that it was (or something very similar). There's certainly the potential for collusion between the two nations, but it's still very unclear why at this point.

I just think it's incredibly simplistic to assume that since he was deported to Syria that the sole reason for doing so was so that the Syrians could torture him.

No, Canada never said they didn't want him, they just gave the US misleading information at the time.

CBC reported:

RCMP investigators without much experience wrongly gave their U.S. counterparts inaccurate, unfair and overstated evidence about the Syrian-Canadian engineer's alleged terrorist sympathies.

"The RCMP provided American authorities with information about Mr. Arar that was inaccurate, portrayed him in an unfairly negative fashion and overstated his importance in the RCMP investigation," O'Connor said at a news conference on Monday.


Oopsie daisies!

Um. That's part of the point I'm making. This was not the "evil US" capturing a Canadian citizen and deciding all on their own to send him to Syria so he could be tortured (as many seem to want to believe). He was captured because the Canadians provide the US with bad information about him. Their mistake. Not ours. He was sent to Syria presumably for the same reason, and as a result of decisions made by the Canadian government, not the US government.

Canada basically told the US he was a terrorist. Told them to hold him. Then told them to send him to Syria instead of to Canada. Um... Why is anyone blaming the US in any of this? He's a "Canadian/Syrian" citizen. If Canada had asked for him to be sent to them, he presumably would have been. Since he was held in the first place as a result of Canada's involvement it's reasonable to assume that the decision to send him to Syria was made by them, not the US.


Um... Blame Canada! ;)


What I find amusing in this case is that the very thing that everyone questions "Why did the US send him to Syria instead of Canada" is pretty darn obvious. It's also (as I pointed out earlier) glaring in its absense in any "relased" statements about the case. Every story magically seems to gloss over this very obvious bit. If Canada was the source of the intel on him, how could they *not* have been involved in the decision to send him to Syria. Yet, oddly, no one *ever* seems to bring up the obvious question or bother to find an answer to it. I find that incredibly curious, don't you?

Edited, Jan 31st 2007 9:22pm by gbaji