“Disclosure might embarrass our Canadian agencies, but I believe that national security laws are not intended to protect them from embarrassment”
That’s what Federal Court Justice Simon Noel has to say about why Canadians have a right to know what CSIS did and didn’t know about Maher Arar while he was being tortured in Syria. His sentiments became public last week with the long-delayed release of a ruling dating back to 2007 – a ruling that sided with the Arar Commission in a fight over the release of a lot of information – something the government argued would compromise national security. Turns out the government was more worried about compromising the reputations of government officials and agencies…
Back when the Arar Inquiry released its public report in 2006, a number of passages were missing. The Inquiry’s Commissioner, Justice O’Connor, had already ruled that the public had a right to see the information, but the government blocked its release by taking the Arar Commission to court. In the end, the Arar Commission won the right to release much of the information – including information showing that CSIS Deputy Director Jack Hooper knew all about the CIA’s so-called extraordinary rendition program very early on, guessing the day after Arar was shipped to Syria that he had been sent somewhere beyond the reach of the rule of law to be tortured.
Arar was detained by the Americans on September 26, 2002, then shipped to Jordan, then Syria, delivered to the infamous house of torture – the Far Falastin – on October 9. An October 10, 2002 memo by Jack Hooper said: “I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him.”
What’s interesting about the ruling is the number of times Justice Noel points out that claims of national security confidentiality should not be used just to protect officials from embarrassment. On Hooper’s memo, Noel said:
“Such disclosure might upset some officials but any reasonable person must admit that such a statement reflects the realities of the time. It might embarrass some, but again, such embarrassment in itself does not constitute injury.
See the Canadian Press story on the ruling by Jim Bronskill here.
The ruling is available here.
October 19th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Hi Ashley,
Which page were the links not working on?
Kerry