A short update

Maher Arar is a Canadian citizen whose case I posted about on November 19. To quickly recap, he was on his way home to Montreal from a trip to Tunisia. When he changed planes at Kennedy Airport in New York on September 26, 2002, he was arrested, held incommunicado for nearly two weeks, and then deported to Syria, where he was held in solitary confinement and tortured over a period of 10 months. Canada finally secured his release.

The case caused enough of an outcry in Canada that an inquiry has been launched to see how this could have happened and what, if any, role Canadian police authorities had in it.

Last week, Syria announced it would not cooperate with the investigation. It turns out on Friday that the US won't, either.

The often outspoken American ambassador to Canada will not testify at the Arar inquiry, a U.S. official told The Globe and Mail yesterday, an assertion that makes Paul Cellucci the latest in a series of potential witnesses to become a no-show. ...

One of the lawyers acting for Mr. Arar was angered yesterday to hear that the U.S. ambassador would not be coming.

"I think it's extremely unfortunate that Mr. Cellucci is not prepared to come forward and clarify the record with respect to all of the inconsistencies and remarks that have been made by him concerning what happened to Mr. Arar," Lorne Waldman said.

Sending Arar to Syria, where we had every reason (and, most likely, expectation) that he would be tortured was not only inhuman, it was illegal. Just what part of that does Mr. Waldman think the US has any interest whatsoever in clarifying?