submitted on Tue, 10/16/2007 - 20:00 in Politics Niche by zorg 
MAHER'S STORY
Maher Arar, 37, is a wireless systems engineer. He was born in Syria and moved to Canada when he was 17 years old, becoming a citizen in 1991. After attending McGill University and obtaining a Master’s degree in telecommunications, he moved to Ottawa with his wife Monia and daughter Barâa. Maher and Monia had their second child, Houd, in February 2002.
On September 26, 2002, on his way home from a family trip, Mr. Arar was pulled aside while transferring planes at JFK Airport in New York. Mr. Arar was questioned by INS officials, FBI agents, and New York police. When Mr. Arar asked for a lawyer he was repeatedly told he had no right to a lawyer, because he was not a U.S. citizen. Mr. Arar was interrogated and held in solitary confinement for 13 days, initially denied food and routinely shackled and denied sleep. During his interrogations, U.S. officials asked Mr. Arar to “voluntarily” return to Syria, a country known for torturing prisoners. Mr. Arar told them repeatedly that he wanted to go home to Canada, as he would be tortured in Syria.
He was visited on October 3, 2006 by Canadian Consulate Maureen Girvan, although she had not been contacted by U.S. officials, as required. Maher expressed his fear that he might be sent to Syria, and Ms. Girvan assured him that he could not, since he was a Canadian citizen.
Throughout his detention in the U.S., Maher repeatedly asked for counsel, but his requests were denied. Finally, after more than one week of detention, he was allowed a short visit with a lawyer. On Sunday, however, the day after meeting with his attorney, Maher was taken from his cell at 9pm and questioned about his fear of being sent to Syria for six hours; his repeated requests for a lawyer throughout the interrogation were denied.
The next day, at 3am, Maher was taken in shackles to a private airport in New Jersey and flown by private jet to Amman, Jordan via Rome, Italy. He was beaten in Amman and then taken to Syria, where he spent the next year in unspeakably horrific conditions.
In Syria, Maher spent more than 10 months in a grave-like underground cell, 3 feet wide and six feet long. He was beaten and interrogated, and whipped with an electrical cable. He was regularly threatened with more torture, and forced to hear others being tortured. He was forced to “confess” to having trained in Afghanistan, although he has never been to Afghanistan.
On October 5, 2003, Syria released Maher. The Syrian Ambassador to the U.S., Imad Moustapha, said, “We did our investigations. We traced links. We traced relations. We tried to find anything. We couldn’t.”
