COMMISSION OF INQUIRY INTO THE
ACTIONS OF CANADIAN OFFICIALS IN
RELATION TO MAHER ARAR
REPORT OF PROFESSOR STEPHEN J. TOOPE
FACT FINDER
14 OCTOBER 2005
Table of Contents
Mandate of the Fact Finder
1
Process
Review
of
public
written
materials
1
Interviews
2
In camera testimony and un-redacted documents
2
What Constitutes Torture?
3
Findings of Fact
Assessing
credibility
5
Torture in Syria
13
Effects of Torture
Physical
effects
19
Psychological
effects
19
Family
and
community
effects
21
Economic
effects
22
Conclusion and Summary of Findings
23
Appendices
A
Bibliography
24
B Interviews
25
Mandate of the Fact Finder
On 27 July 2005, Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor, Commissioner of Inquiry into the Actions of
Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, issued terms of reference appointing me as Fact
Finder for the Commission. My mandate was set out in precise terms:
Pursuant to the Commission's "Ruling on Process and Procedural Issues" of
May 9, 2005, I hereby appoint Prof. Stephen J. Toope as a fact finder for the
Commission, with the following terms of reference:
To investigate and report to the Commission on Mr. Maher Arar's treatment
during his detention in Jordan and Syria and its effects upon him and his family.
My role is not to reach factual conclusions on the role of Canadian officials in the saga of
Maher Arar. Rather, I am to determine with as much specificity as possible what happened to
Mr. Arar in Jordan and Syria and to assess the effects of those events and experiences upon
Mr. Arar and his family. Given the short time that Mr. Arar spent in Jordan, and his very limited
interactions with Jordanian security officials, I determined at the outset of my inquiries that the
Jordanian leg of his difficult travels would not be material to an assessment of his experiences or
their effects. In the course of my investigations it became clear that to assess effects it was also
necessary to consider what happened to Mr. Arar upon his return to Canada, and in the months
and years following his return. These events and experiences are the direct consequence of what
happened in Syria, and so fall within my terms of reference. In other words, it is not possible to
consider "effects" without considering the interplay of the raw events in Syria with the reactions
to Mr. Arar upon his return and the experience of the Commission of Inquiry itself.
Process
Review of Written materials
I began my investigations by reviewing publicly available reports detailing the human rights
situation in Syria. In considering the materials on Syria, I focussed upon admittedly rather
sketchy descriptions of detention facilities and reports of interrogation techniques employed by
the Syrian security services. I paid particular attention to any references to the Far Falestin
detention centre, where Mr. Arar had reportedly been held for most of his time in Syria. The
reports consulted, which were authored by both governmental and non-governmental entities, are
listed in Appendix A to this report.
I also requested and received from Dr. Donald Payne, Board Member of the Canadian Centre for
Victims of Torture and expert witness before the Arar Inquiry, case reports of four patients he
had worked with in the early-to-mid-1990's, who claimed to have been tortured while in Syrian
detention. I determined that these reports might help to establish patterns that persisted over a
period of time. These case notes were, of course, private, but there was no nominate information
in the reports; nor were any personal details provided that might allow for the identification of
the patients.
I then reviewed all of the relevant public testimony before the Arar Commission that related to
Mr. Arar's conditions of detention and his experiences in interrogation. In particular, I focussed
upon the expert testimony of Professor Peter Burns, Former Chair of the United Nations
Committee Against Torture; Dr. Donald Payne, who testified on the physical and psychological
effects of torture; and Professor Richard Ofshe, an expert on the classification of true and false
confessions.
Interviews
With this background information in mind, I then interviewed Mr. Abdullah Almalki,
Mr. Ahmad Abou-ELMaati and Mr. Muayyed Nureddin, each of whom described in vivid detail
their experiences in Syrian detention facilities, and in particular in Far Falestin. The testimony
of these men was not taken under oath, but my purpose was to compare their descriptions with
the information that I had gleaned from the case reports of Dr. Payne and the publicly available
reports concerning the conditions of detention at Far Falestin and the interrogation "techniques"
of the Syrian security forces. I would later have to assess the credibility of this testimony, and
then relate it to what I would be told by Mr. Arar himself. In gathering the information from
Messrs. Almalki, ELMaati and Nureddin, I was careful to allow them to tell their stories in an
unfiltered way, never posing leading questions. I wanted to let as much detail come forward as
possible, detail that I would later use to compare with the testimony of Mr. Arar.
I also interviewed people who had worked closely with Mr. Arar since his return to Canada from
Syria, and health professionals with whom Mr. Arar had consulted. In these interviews, I
focussed primarily upon the effects of Mr. Arar's experiences on his physical and psychological
health, on his social and familial relationships, and on his economic prospects. A complete list
of interviews is found in Appendix B.
Finally, I interviewed Dr. Monia Mazigh, Mr. Arar's wife, and conducted two long in-person
interviews with Mr. Arar, and one short telephone interview. In total, I spent almost 10 hours
with Mr. Arar.
In camera Testimony and Un-redacted Documents
The last step in my investigations was to review some in camera testimony and a small selection
of un-redacted documents that were of direct relevance to my assessment of Mr. Arar's
experiences in Syria. I chose the testimony and documents to examine after consulting with the
Commissioner and with Commission counsel. I was not refused access to any material that I
requested to see. This included the Canadian government's annual reviews of the legal, political
and penal situation in Syria, notes taken by the Canadian consular officer, Mr. Léo Martel, after
his consular visits with Mr. Arar (and some variations of these notes communicated to other
Canadian government officials), and protected email communications amongst Canadian
government officials during and after Mr. Arar's detention. It is important to state that there was
nothing in the in camera testimony or the un-redacted documents that caused me to materially
modify my assessment of the facts surrounding Mr. Arar's detention. I discovered no "secret"
material that caused me to re-evaluate the information that had been provided in public sources.
2
What Constitutes "Torture"?
Even while Mr. Arar was in detention in Syria, reports circulated that he was being subjected to
torture. A report of the Syrian Human Rights Committee, an NGO based in London, provided
certain details that Mr. Arar himself later contradicted and clarified. In his first public statement
on the conditions of his detention, delivered on November 4, 2003, a month after his return to
Canada, Mr. Arar described his treatment in the context of torture. He stated:
The next day I was taken upstairs again. The beating started that day and was very
intense for a week, and then less intense for another week. That second and the
third days were the worst. I could hear other prisoners being tortured, and
screaming and screaming. Interrogations are carried out in different rooms.
One tactic they use is to question prisoners for two hours, and then put them in a
waiting room, so they can hear the others screaming, and then bring them back to
continue the interrogation.
The cable is a black electrical cable, about two inches thick. They hit me with it
everywhere on my body. They mostly aimed for my palms, but sometimes missed
and hit my wrists they were sore and red for three weeks. They also struck me on
my hips, and lower back. Interrogators constantly threatened me with the metal
chair, tire and electric shocks.
The tire is used to restrain prisoners while they torture them with beating on the
sole of their feet. I guess I was lucky, because they put me in the tire, but only as a
threat. I was not beaten while in tire.
They used the cable on the second and third day, and after that mostly beat me
with their hands, hitting me in the stomach and on the back of my neck, and
slapping me on the face. Where they hit me with the cables, my skin turned blue
for two or three weeks, but there was no bleeding. At the end of the day they told
me tomorrow would be worse. So I could not sleep.
Then on the third day, the interrogation lasted about eighteen hours.
From the earliest descriptions of his ordeal, to the first public statement, and in all the subsequent
representations of his counsel before the Commission, Mr. Arar has asserted that he was tortured.
It is therefore necessary for me to enter the grim realms of defining what is meant by the term
torture.
In assessing what constitutes torture, I am assisted by well-established international law
standards and by clear testimony before the Commission. In the United Nations Convention
Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984
[hereinafter Convention Against Torture], "torture" is defined in Article 1 as:
...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is
intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a
3
third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third
person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or
coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any
kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the
consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official
capacity.
The Convention Against Torture is ratified by 140 states, including Canada (in 1985) and the
Syrian Arab Republic (in 2004).1 The definition of torture contained in the Convention is widely
supported, and can serve as the appropriate basis for assessing whether or not Mr. Arar was
indeed subjected to torture.
The definition in the Convention Against Torture contains five elements: (1) the intentional
(2) infliction of severe pain or suffering, (3) whether mental or physical, (4) for a range of
purposes (5) when inflicted by, or at the instigation of, or with the consent or acquiescence of a
public official or a person acting in an official capacity.
In his expert testimony before the Commission, Professor Peter Burns reviewed the experience
of the Committee Against Torture, the treaty body set up to hear state reports and individual
complaints under the Convention Against Torture. Professor Burns is a former Chair of the
Committee. He emphasised that the Committee has paid much attention to the severity of the
pain or suffering that is necessary to constitute torture and to the purposive requirement of the
definition. When asked directly by counsel for Mr. Arar whether being "beaten repeatedly with
an electrical cord during the course of interrogations that sometimes lasted as long as 18 hours"
would meet the Committee's requirements for severity, Professor Burns replied: "If that was
established, in my view that would certainly be torture". (Burns testimony, pp. 5920-5921)
The questioning of Professor Burns then turned to the conditions of detention described by
Mr. Arar. Mr. Arar's lawyer described the cell in which Mr. Arar said that he was held for over
10 months, and was asked if these conditions of detention might in and of themselves constitute
severe pain or suffering as understood by the Committee Against Torture. Professor Burns
answered:
Assuming that that was established, and assuming the medical evidence supported
it, I would regard it as torture, again subject to the purposive aspect of the
definition. (Burns testimony, p. 5922)
On the "purposive" requirement of the definition, Professor Burns went on to explain that to
constitute torture, it would not be enough that conditions of detention might be appalling or that
Syrian officials were conducting interrogations and applying severe force. The infliction of
severe pain or suffering would have to be for a purpose, such as the extraction of a confession, or
another purpose referred to in Article 1 of the Convention.
1 See the website of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
http://www.ohchr.org/english/countries/ratification/9.htm
4
In determining whether or not Mr. Arar was tortured, I looked for each of the elements contained
in the definition of the Convention Against Torture. I was especially attentive to the issues of
severity of pain and suffering, and purpose. The other three elements of the definition are more
straightforward, with the possible exception of intention. Although intention is often considered
a difficult problem in the imposition of criminal liability, it is less problematic in the definition
of torture for two reasons. First, the types of force used in torture typically reveal intention. One
does not apply electric shocks without intending to produce pain and suffering. Second, if one
can discern a purpose in the application of force, the intention to harm is relatively easy to
impute.
Findings of Fact
Assessing credibility
In finding facts concerning Mr. Arar's experiences in Syria, I must conclude as to the credibility
of his testimony, which was not taken under oath. Given the very nature of detention and
interrogation, much of the detail concerning what happened to Mr. Arar in Syria cannot be
verified by eyewitness observers. None of the jailers or interrogators was available for me to
interview. To assess credibility, I have obviously had to judge the person sitting before me and
telling me his story. I have listened to Mr. Arar attentively and watched him closely. I have
tried to compare his demeanour and his reactions to the scores of other torture victims and
detainees I have interviewed on human rights monitoring missions in numerous countries, and in
testimony before me at the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances where torture victims have also appeared. I have also undertaken a careful
comparison of public sources about detention conditions and interrogation practices in Syria and
the testimony before me. Finally, I have cross-referenced the detailed descriptions provided to
me by the four men I interviewed who discussed their detention and treatment in Far Falestin. In
undertaking that cross-referencing, I have also implicitly had to assess the credibility of the
descriptions offered by Messrs. Almalki, ELMaati and Nureddin. To do this, I have repeated the
same practices used to judge the reliability of Mr. Arar.
I must emphasise that in assessing credibility, I am limiting myself to the parameters of my
mandate: I am judging only whether or not the stories told to me concerning the conditions of
detention in Syria and the practices of Syrian security services are believable and likely to be
true. Within these parameters, I am confident in concluding that the descriptions offered by
Messrs. Almalki, ELMaati and Nureddin were convincing.
Mr. ELMaati was held in Syrian detention from November 2001 to January 25, 2002, when he
was transferred to Egyptian custody. During his first interrogation he was mocked and insulted.
In what may seem surprising at first blush, insults were highlighted by Mr. ELMaati as a
particularly troubling feature of his first interrogation, even though he was also punched and
kicked. This is a pattern repeated by all the men I interviewed who had been held in
Far Falestin. Each described in vivid detail the dehumanizing effect of the "dirty" or "nasty"
words used by the interrogators. None of them even wanted to repeat these words. Mr. Almalki,
who was detained from 3 May 2002 to 29 February 2004, explained the psychological effect
most directly: he suggested that when the dirty words were used, he realized that he was going
to be treated very badly. It was a shock delivered to his whole system.
5
The words also worked harm and created fear at a deep cultural level. The men I interviewed
were all committed Muslims. They found the words deeply offensive from a religious
perspective, especially when the words were used in relation to mothers, sisters or wives, and
linked to threats. It must also be said that the use of "dirty" words seems to have confirmed
cultural stereotypes. Two of the men I interviewed emphasized that the interrogators at
Far Falestin were not traditional Sunni Moslems, but Alawites (a favoured group under the
Baathist regime). There was a high level of distrust, even disgust that I sensed in their
descriptions of the interrogators, rooted not only in suffering but in cultural incompatibility.
Mr. ELMaati also offered a lengthy and highly specific description of the cell in which he was
held. He remembered cell Number 5 with horror, describing it as a "hell hole". The cell was
downstairs from the interrogation rooms, in a basement. It was approximately "190 cm high by
180 cm long by 90 cm wide". A small window in the door was blocked. There was a small hole
in the ceiling covered by bars. Mr. ELMaati found two blankets that smelled of urine. The cell
was freezing cold, as it was winter and there was no heating.
This description of a cell at Far Falestin was mirrored almost exactly by Mr. Almalki. His cell
was also downstairs from the interrogation rooms. It was small and dark, approximately 198 cm
high by 185 cm long by 86 cm wide. Mr. Almalki was quite precise about the dimensions; he
had decided to make a special effort to remember the conditions of the cell with care. For
example, he remembered that the width was the length of his arm, plus the diameter of four
fingers. He also described a hole in the ceiling some 25 by 15 cm, and mentioned that cats
would sometimes urinate through the hole. The side and back walls were slick with
condensation, and lice and cockroaches infested the cell. Large rats would sometimes squeeze
under the cell door, presumably to look for food. On one very rare occasion when he was
allowed to go outside for roughly 20 minutes, in July of 2002, Mr. Almalki took his blankets
with him to air them. In the light he could see yellow and black growth on the blankets and
"insulator" (two pieces of cloth stitched together to place under his blankets), that he had not
seen in the dark cell. In winter the cell was freezing: "I used one of my underwear to put on my
head just to warm my ears, I used socks on my hands...and all the clothes I have I was basically
wearing". In summer it was stifling hot. Mr. Almalki told me that his interrogators referred to
the cell as "the grave".
Mr. Nureddin was detained from 11 December 2003 to 14 January 2004. He struck me as a
simple man: his descriptions were unembellished and visceral. He described his fear at being
shown in an interrogation room a few links of chain on a wall and an open chair frame which he
immediately deduced were used for torture. Many details of his testimony correlated closely to
descriptions offered by Messrs. Almalki and ELMaati. For example, in one interrogation session
two days after his arrest, Mr. Nureddin described how he was stripped to his underwear and had
cold water poured over him while lying on his stomach under a fan. He was asked to raise his
feet. He then saw a "black cable" which was used to beat him on the soles of his feet. This cable
which figures prominently in all the descriptions of beatings that I heard was brought down
on his feet some fifteen times. Then Mr. Nureddin was told to stand up. Cold water was poured
on his feet to ease the searing pain, and he was ordered to run in one place before the procedure
was repeated two more times.
6
Mr. Almalki described a similar pattern with even greater intensity. In his first interrogation
session, on the night of his detention, Mr. Almalki was also partially stripped and told to lie on
his stomach with his legs in the air. He was beaten with a black cable, in his case all over his
body, but especially on the soles of his feet. Cold water was then poured on his feet and he was
ordered to run in one place. He explained that this procedure actually restored feeling to the soles
of the feet, and allowed the interrogators to begin the process again.
Mr. ELMaati was also treated to a stripping down to his underwear, pouring of cold water over
him, and intense beatings with what he described as a "black electric cable roughly an inch
thick".
In the case of all three men, it is important to specify that they were being beaten explicitly to
gain information and a confession to involvement in a terrorist organization or plot.
Mr. ELMaati was asked about a map of a government complex in Ottawa that he knew had been
discovered in the truck that he drove for a haulage company. He was specifically asked to "tell
us the story of the map". Mr. Nureddin was asked if he belonged to "Ansari Islam".
Mr. Almalki was asked "why everyone is looking for him" and was told to admit that he was
"the right hand of Osama bin Laden". At one point well into his detention, an interrogator told
Mr. Almalki that he would be tortured for three days straight, that he would "not get out until
you need to be hospitalized". Or Mr. Almalki could confess to being a member of Al Qaeda and
he might be released.
In each case, the men ultimately signed confessions or wrote out what they say they thought that
interrogators wanted to read. Mr. ELMaati said that after three days of beatings he just could not
resist any longer. Mr. Nureddin testified that he signed three documents that he had not read; he
did so after hearing the screams of other torture victims, including women which he found
particularly upsetting. Mr. Almalki told me that after severe beatings he "was prepared to say
more or less anything about myself", but that it was "another thing to implicate someone else I
did not know or did not know to have done anything".
In his testimony before the Commission of Inquiry, Professor Richard Ofshe, a leading expert on
the classification of true and false confessions from the University of California, Berkeley,
emphasised that the use of physical force he was questioned in the context of "torture" is a
"powerful motivator" for confessions (Ofshe testimony, pp. 5982-5983). He went on:
If the individual has already been convinced that the interrogator is immovable,
then it makes no sense to resist the torture. The only thing in front of them is to
minimize the torture. That is the only choice they've got. And they can do that by
complying. ...And if you can succeed in cutting it [the torture] off by giving a
false confession, that can start to look like a very attractive alternative... .(Ofshe
testimony, p. 5983)
This testimony is relevant because it helps to explain the psychological state of the men I
interviewed who had been interrogated in Far Falestin. Each told me that at some point they
concluded that they had to tell the interrogators whatever they wanted to hear. Professor Ofshe
explains why the truth or falsity of a statement may come to mean nothing to a detainee in the
face of continuing physical violence.
7
Dr. Donald Payne explained the psychological effects of torture slightly differently, but the
consequences he describes align with those suggested by Professor Ofshe:
[T]orture has usually been...viewed as pain and suffering that is inflicted on
somebody and people respond to reduce the pain, whereas seeing many
individuals you come to recognize it is really destroying the will, humanity, spirit
of the individual so that they lose control of themselves and are willing to give up
control of themselves to their torturers. (Payne testimony, p. 6052)
This description is consonant with the statements of the men I interviewed who often spoke of
their "humiliation" or of attacks on their "dignity". But, like Professor Ofshe's account, it helps
to explain why one might "say anything" to stop physical abuse: one may simply give up
control, including control over the truth about oneself.
Of all the testimony I heard, Mr. Almalki's revealed the most intense pain and suffering. It is
important to recount aspects of this testimony because it is the closest in certain descriptive
elements to what I later heard from Mr. Arar. It is also important because Mr. Arar and
Mr. Almalki overlapped in their respective periods of detention; the conditions they describe are
closely interconnected.
When Mr. Almalki first arrived at Far Falestin, he was asked routine questions, and he was
treated "decently". Indeed, he thought that he could still convince the Syrian authorities with
whom he had to deal that his arrest was "a mistake". He was even told that he might be out in a
"couple [of] hours". He was then blindfolded and taken to another room, where he was asked
whether he knew certain people. He remained blindfolded for roughly two days. After being
asked about one person who Mr. Almalki said that he did not know, suddenly he received a hard
slap across the face. Mr. Almalki described how he felt "transferred...to another world":
I still remember that slap as if it's happening right now, and I got, just so vivid in
my memory...because I felt just that he, in humiliation that they sacked my
dignity, they crushed my, you know, my personality, just, it felt so bad when they
slapped me...
Thus began an interrogation session that continued for between seven and eight hours. That was
when he was asked to strip to his underwear and to lie on his stomach on the floor. The "whole
point [was] to have my legs at 90 degrees". They started "hammering my soles. Basically it felt
like lava just being poured over". In later session when he was not blindfolded, Mr. Almalki saw
that the interrogators used a black cable that "looks something like a, the alternator belt in the
car". He also saw black hoses "but they didn't use them too much because they said this is not
as painful as the cables". Mr. Almalki specified that there were different styles of the cables
used at different times, of "different thicknesses, different length, different ways of putting it
together and taping it and twisting it on itself".
After enduring beatings on his soles for some time, Mr. Almalki felt he could bear no more, and
he flipped over. The five or six interrogators were angry, so they began kicking Mr. Almalki,
and beating him all over with the cable. They stood on his back to restrain him. After more
8
lashes on Mr. Almalki's soles, the interrogators used the cooling method (cold water and running
in place) described previously. The interrogation only stopped when Mr. Almalki lost
consciousness, and woke up with a doctor checking his blood pressure.
Mr. Almalki was then taken to the dark cell described above. He later learned that he was in cell
number three; he was called "Number Three" for the entire period of his detention. On this first
day the cell was a refuge:
I just felt that I don't want to go through the hell again so if they would just keep
the door shut... . Well, few minutes in there I just felt like crying, I just cried, I, I
just didn't know what to do.
Over the course of a few months, the cell would take on an overwhelmingly negative power, and
Mr. Almalki would almost hope to be taken for interrogations (which by this time were much
less violent) to escape from the conditions of his solitary detention.
Mr. Almalki also described in detail the bathroom routine for prisoners in the basement cells.
The two cockroach infested washrooms were made available to prisoners one-by-one three times
a day. A bottle was in his cell for urination. At first Mr. Almalki was allowed exactly two
minutes for each bathroom visit. This limit was enforced rigidly, and forcefully. Mr. Almalki
complained that two minutes was not always enough for bodily functions, and that he would
have to stop eating. One guard began to allow Mr. Almalki an extra minute in the bathroom.
Even this was not much of a help when a prisoner had diarrhoea, which was common because of
the bad food and water. In such circumstances, waiting to use the bathroom could be
excruciating. On Fridays, he remembered that roughly ten minutes was allowed for pre-prayer
ablutions.
Early the next morning, his second day at Far Falestin, and only about four hours after the
previous interrogation had ended, Mr. Almalki was called up again. He was interrogated for
approximately eighteen hours straight, but the focus was on intense questioning, not intense
physical pressure.
On the third day, he was called in the morning and immediately told to take off most of his
clothes. Mr. Almalki was forced into a car tire, his neck shoved against an inner rim, his back
bent double and his knees against the other side of the inner rim. He was then beaten severely,
especially on his head, his soles and his genitals. The motivation was clear:
...for every point they were asking me about...keep on beating me till I answer
with something that they were satisfied; and then they would move on to another
point and they would keep on beating me for that point till, you know, they get
satisfied either that what I was saying was true or I get them what they wanted.
This treatment lasted for some three or four hours. In a surprisingly mundane twist, lunch was
then brought in and Mr. Almalki was given some chicken and a piece of orange. He
remembered that the orange was very hard to eat because "the inner skin of my mouth was
almost gone because of the screaming so it was burning to eat anything acidic, I guess".
9
Interrogation continued for roughly 40 days, but without applications of force comparable to
those of the first three days. Then around the fortieth day, Mr. Almalki was called in for an
interrogation and asked for the first time about any connection he might have with
Mr. Maher Arar. This was part of a wider ranging set of questions involving a number of
Mr. Almalki's friends and acquaintances, and about Mr. Almalki's business dealings. This
questioning involved a new interrogator, who Mr. Almalki later discovered, was a
Mr. George Salloum, the "head of interrogation" at Far Falestin.
On July 17, 2002, Mr. Almalki was called up for another session of interrogation. He remembers
that
...the tone of the treatment was different. They asked me to wear the blindfold
immediately once I got up. Basically this blindfold was a, you know, you have
the prison floor then stairs up to the interrogation floor, once you are at the gate,
the door from the stairs to the interrogation floor, at the right-hand side there is a
bucket of water which has these rubber pieces, blindfolds, they keep in the water I
guess to keep them soft. ... But at same time for annoying the prisoners and
humiliating them their water is the filthiest I have ever seen.
Blindfolded, Mr. Almalki was taken into an interrogation room and immediately slapped,
punched and questioned aggressively for roughly an hour or two. He was accused of lying to the
interrogators during his past sessions. He was then taken back to his cell, but remembers that he
could hear almost constant screaming from other prisoners being interrogated. He stressed that
this was a common denominator throughout his stay at Far Falestin: hearing screams. It reached
a point where "I could distinguish if someone is being tortured by the tire, the chair, electricity;
each one had a different type of screaming...".
The next day, July 19th, Mr. Almalki was brought up for interrogation in the morning, but the
approach was less aggressive. He was returned to his cell, then called back up at roughly 11 am,
and "the humiliation started again...beating and calling names". Mr. Almalki was forced to
stand on one foot facing the wall. When he lost balance or tried to change legs, he would be
beaten. Then the chief interrogator, Mr. George Salloum, arrived and asked Mr. Almalki why he
had lied. Mr. Almalki was then blindfolded and the beating recommenced, with repeated and
powerful slaps across the face.
Then Mr. Almalki was forced onto his stomach, just as in the first three days of interrogation,
and the black cable was used to "hammer" the soles of his feet. He was once again accused of
supporting Osama bin Laden and of training with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. After more beatings,
which lasted until after midnight, Mr. Almalki said that he told the interrogators whatever they
wanted to hear.
On July 20th, Mr. Almalki was brought back to a different, high-ceilinged, interrogation room.
More brutal questioning began. He was partially stripped and slapped. The room had a border at
the bottom of the wall, a cement projection about 10 cm wide, which was probably part of the
building's foundation. At the top of the wall there was a metal window with bars. Mr. Almalki
was forced to face outward with his back against the wall, his hands above his head holding the
bars on the window while standing on the cement projection at the bottom of the wall. He then
10
had to let his feet slide from the ledge and hang, the window sill cutting into his wrists. When he
slid down or fell, he would be beaten and told to suspend himself again. His hands and wrists
were bleeding and the pain was intense. He was finally tied in this same manner to the bars,
using strips of cloth, with his hands behind his head. The slapping continued, and Mr. Almalki
was also hit with a belt and a black cable.
Mr. Almalki cannot remember how long he was kept in this position, as the pain blocked out his
mental faculties. Finally, he was let down, but beatings continued all night. After this
experience, Mr. Almalki gave in to the interrogators completely:
My policy after that was I wasn't willing to take any beating... I told them
`Whatever you want, I'll tell you what I know. If you want something else, I will
sign a piece of paper, blank, and you fill it up with whatever you want or you can
tell me what you want me to fill it up;' and I was really, I, I got to the point where
I felt I cannot take any, you know, one more lash...
In fact, during the period in late July the interrogations continued to be harsh, though there were
fewer intense beatings. Until August 24th. On that day another intensive session of beatings
took place involving an unspecified number of interrogators. Mr. Almalki was again
blindfolded.
In September and October, Mr. Almalki was questioned but without the application of physical
force. Instead, he was threatened with new forms of punishment, including "the chair" which
Mr. Almalki knew to be a brutal method in which a victim's back was twisted over the empty
frame of a metal chair, producing intense pain. Many of the questions began to revolve around
his relationship with Maher Arar. From November 2002 to August 2003, Mr. Almalki remained
in the same dark cell, and was questioned regularly, but not with the same use of physical force
that he had previously experienced. He emphasises that he spent 483 days in that horrible cell.
In August of 2003, Mr. Almalki was transferred to Sednaya military prison, where he
experienced some further beatings, but not of quite the intensity of those in Far Falestin. Here,
however, the beatings were not to gain information, merely to punish or intimidate. Nor were
the living conditions quite so harsh, except for a period of ten days at the beginning of his
detention in Sednaya that he spent in another subterranean cell. He was released from Syrian
detention on March 1, 2004.
Messrs. Arar and Almalki overlapped in Sednaya prison, where they were able to talk at some
length. However, they apparently did not share all the details of their respective detention and
interrogation experiences. They both told me that they were more preoccupied with daily
survival and with discussing how to get out of detention. Since then, they have been in touch
from time-to-time in Canada, but Mr. Arar says that they have not spoken for more than a total of
five to six hours in person or on the telephone since their respective returns to this country.
Mr. Arar states that when he saw the chronology of Mr. Almalki's detention that was published
in the media, more than eighty per cent was new information to Mr. Arar. Mr. Arar and
Mr. ELMaati did not know each other well, but apparently have become mildly acquainted
recently as a result of the Inquiry. They had not discussed the details of their detention and
treatment in Syria before Mr. Arar's story became public. Mr. Nureddin and Mr. Arar did not
know each other and to my knowledge have still not been in touch.
11
Although there are strong similarities in the descriptions of Syrian detention and interrogation
techniques offered by Messrs. Almalki, Arar, ELMaati, and Nureddin, I have been given no
reason to suspect any collusion. Indeed, there are also some telling differences in what they
described, differences that help me conclude that the similarities are based on authentic patterns
and not on any collaboration to produce coherent stories.
The descriptions provided by Messrs. Almalki, ELMaati, and Nureddin were also consistent with
the descriptions of Far Falestin available in public sources, but were much more detailed. For
example, the 2004 Country Report on Human Rights Practices for Syria, published by the United
States Department of State, notes that former detainees "reported torture methods" including
"beating, sometimes while the victim is suspended from the ceiling". The State Department
reports that "torture was most likely to occur while detainees were being held at one of the many
detention centers run by the various security services throughout the country" (State Department
2004, p. 2). The State Department's Report for 2002 contained essentially the same information
(State Department 2002, p. 2). Amnesty International's Report of 2002 states that in Syria
"[t]orture and ill-treatment continued to be inflicted routinely on political prisoners, especially
during incommunicado detention at the Palestine Branch [Far Falestin]...". (Amnesty
International 2002, p. 2).
The practices described by Messrs. Almalki, Arar, ELMaati, and Nureddin also found strong
echoes in the case notes provided to me by Dr. Payne. Refugee claimants previously held in
Syrian detention in the early 1990's also described tiny basement cells that were damp and dirty,
hearing people screaming between their own interrogation sessions, being hit by cables, and
being forced into a tire for beatings. The pattern of brutal beatings at the very beginning of
detention followed by less "intense" interrogation was also reported by one of Dr. Payne's
patients.
The 2003 Annual Report of the Syrian Human Rights Committee provided more specific
information. It referred to detainees in "Palestine Branch for Military Interrogation" who were
"severely tortured and subject to immense physical and psychological abuse". The report
specifically mentioned Mr. Arar, who was said to have been subjected "to severe torture and
intensive interrogation and charged with cooperating with Al Qaeda" (Syrian Human Rights
Committee 2003, pp. 3-4). In a letter to Mr. Arar's wife, Dr. Monia Mazigh, dated
July 29, 2003, the Committee asserted that Mr. Arar was being subjected to extreme torture
including "hitting with a baton and a fraying cable on the soles of his feet and on his body, the
use of electricity and bending in an automobile tire for many hours".
As will soon become apparent, the description of the Syrian Human Rights Committee was
exaggerated. I take it to be a positive sign of his credibility that Mr. Arar was clear both in
public and to me that his treatment was not as bad as suggested by the Committee. Mr. Arar
knew what had been reported by the Committee before he made his first public statement
detailing his treatment, yet his own description was more restrained. What is more, Mr. Arar
also knew some of what Mr. Almalki had experienced but never sought to "out bid" Mr. Almalki
in suffering. Indeed, Mr. Arar stated to me directly that he thought Mr. Almalki's experience
had been worse than his own. Throughout his testimony, Mr. Arar was remarkably measured.
He was able to recall significant detail, but adjectives and adverbs were notably absent. He
12
struggled to remember at times, and only rarely lost his composure. When he did, it was almost
always in reference to the suffering of someone else: Mr. Almalki, women that he heard being
tortured, the idea of his children being left without him for a long time.
When I compare information available from public sources with the cross-referenced testimony
of Messrs. Almalki, ELMaati, and Nureddin, I conclude that the stories they tell are credible. I
believe that they suffered severe physical and psychological trauma while in detention in Syria.
Mr. Almalki was especially badly treated, and for an extended period. When I compare all of
this information to the story told to me by Mr. Arar, I am convinced that his description of his
treatment in Syria is accurate. It is now time to turn to that story.
Torture in Syria
When Mr. Arar was taken across the border from Jordan to Syria on October 9, 2002, he was
already extremely worried and distraught. It is important to consider his state of mind even
before he found himself in Far Falestin. He had been arrested in New York, and strip-searched,
which he found "humiliating". He had been held in the Metropolitan Detention Centre in
Manhattan for eleven days (September 27th to October 7th), being interrogated. He was initially
denied access to a lawyer, and had little food or sleep. His request to pray during the
interrogation sessions had also been denied. His interrogators had insulted him and used "bad
words", which he found deeply upsetting. At 3:00 am one morning, he was awakened and told
that the Director of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service had ordered that Mr. Arar be
sent, not to Canada, as he says that he constantly requested, but to Syria. He told me that at this
moment he began to cry and immediately said that he would be tortured. He felt "destroyed".
Mr. Arar was then bundled into a van to New Jersey where he was loaded onto a private plane
that began a long journey to Syria, via Washington, Portland Maine, Rome, and Amman.
Throughout this trip of many, many hours, he was chained and shackled in the back of the plane.
Only in the last couple of hours were the shackles removed; he was then invited to eat some
dinner with his guards. He could not eat. He recalls that he had plenty of time to remember
stories he had heard from his parents in the 1980's about abuse in Syrian prisons. He was
terribly frightened, and assumed that he would face torture.
Mr. Arar arrived in Jordan in the middle of the night. While being transported to a detention
centre, his Jordanian guards apparently hit him repeatedly on the back of the head. Mr. Arar was
blindfolded. He had not slept since he left New York. He was brought into a room and his
blindfold was taken off. He was asked some routine questions and then blindfolded again and
taken to a cell. He could not sleep for fear. The next morning he was taken to a doctor who
asked if he had any chronic diseases or conditions. Then he was taken to an interrogation room
and asked more routine questions before being told what he already knew: "You are clear you
are going to Syria".
That same day he was bundled into a car or van. Being blindfolded again, he was not sure
exactly what was happening. He was told by one guard that he was going back to Montreal, and
he was desperate to believe him. Instead, he was transferred twice into other vehicles. He was
driven fast over bad roads; from time-to-time, he was struck by one of his guards.
13
At around 5:00 pm that same day, he was taken into a building and his blindfold removed. He
saw pictures of Presidents Assad, father and son. Some of his luggage that had been given back
to him in Jordan after the plane ride was searched and gifts for his family chocolates and
perfume were stolen. Later, Mr. Arar learned that he was in the Far Falestin detention centre.
He had arrived exhausted, hungry and terrified. He ventured to me that he was so frightened at
that moment that if he could have figured out some way to kill himself he would have done it.
I must pause at this point to offer some impressions of Mr. Arar, gleaned from our extended
conversations and from the way he tells his story. The impressions are relevant to my
assessment of his credibility and, even more, to my later evaluation of the effects of his
experiences upon Mr. Arar and his family. Mr. Arar strikes me as a person with what one might
describe as moral courage. By that I mean that he is willing to take risks when he feels that he
must make a point or to vindicate a belief. However, he does not seem to be particularly
physically courageous. He is not "tough"; the prospect of physical pain frightens him a lot.
When frightened, he loses composure. On many occasions he told me that a particular
circumstance had caused him to break into tears. This observation is not a criticism. Far from it.
There are few people in our era in Canada who must ever test their own physical courage. I
cannot imagine how I would react if threatened with the prospect of torture or if confronted with
its reality. My point is only that when one considers Mr. Arar's situation as he entered
Far Falestin, it is relevant to note that his fear seems already to have been intense and his
resources to cope with violence limited.
Later on the same day he arrived at Far Falestin, Mr. Arar was taken for questioning from around
8:00 pm to midnight. He was questioned by a man named "George", who Mr. Arar later
discovered was George Salloum, the head of interrogation at Far Falestin, who also interrogated
Mr. Almalki, but in his case, only later in the period of detention. Two other interrogators were
taking notes while George asked the questions, which were mostly about Mr. Arar's family.
George said he knew one of Mr. Arar's brothers, but this later turned out to be a lie. Mr. Arar
said that he was already crying and "destroyed" during this interview. He had already decided to
"say anything" necessary to avoid torture. It should be recalled that the other men I interviewed
who had been in Far Falestin each made the same point, reflected as well in the extensive
experience of Professor Ofshe: telling interrogators what they seemed to want to hear was
simply a way to avoid physical abuse. Alternatively, in Dr. Payne's framework, saying what
interrogators want to hear is simply a giving up of control, including control over the truth about
oneself. There was in fact no physical violence during this interrogation, but there were ominous
threats. If Mr. Arar was slow to answer, George said that he would use "the chair" which
Mr. Arar did not understand, but assumed to be a form of torture.
After receiving some bread and potatoes to eat, Mr. Arar was taken downstairs to the basement.
He was shown to the end of a hall and turned right and pushed through an open door. His
reaction was one of shock, as he found himself in a tiny cell, roughly seven feet high by six feet
long by three feet wide. The dimensions, though expressed in feet, rather than centimetres,
correspond closely to the descriptions of Messrs. Almalki and ELMaati. So do other details.
Mr. Arar mentioned that the cell contained only two thin blankets and a "humidity isolator" as
well as two bottles, "one for water and one for pee". He also described an opening in the middle
of the ceiling, roughly one foot by two feet. There was no light in the cell at all, except what
filtered through from the opening in the ceiling. He recalled two or three times when cats peed
14
through that opening. He later discovered rats in the building, seeing them in the bathroom. He
found rats "scary" and began to stuff some Chinese-made shoes that he had been given in
New York under the cell door to prevent rats from slithering in. The cell was damp and very
cold in winter and stifling in summer. Mr. Arar was known to guards only by his cell number:
Two.
Mr. Arar's description of the bathroom routine also matches the detail offered by Mr. Almalki.
Each prisoner was called to the bathroom three times a day, usually before the serving of meals.
The guards would randomly start at different cells and would stand by the toilet. Each prisoner
was given two or three minutes. One guard, with whom Mr. Arar had a slightly better
relationship, would allow a little extra time in the bathroom. As other prisoners remembered, the
bathroom routine was excruciating when one had diarrhea. Mr. Arar was relatively lucky in that
he had been able to bring in two tins that had been filled with Tunisian sweets. He used these
tins when necessary and cleaned them in the bathroom. On Friday, fifteen minutes was allowed
for washing before prayers.
On the day after he was brought to Far Falestin, October 9, 2002, Mr. Arar was even more
exhausted, as he could not sleep in the horrible cell. He was called up for interrogation. When
George arrived, he immediately started hitting Mr. Arar. The chair on which Mr. Arar was
sitting was taken away, so that he was now on the floor. Being put on the floor is a pattern
repeated by the other men I interviewed. They interpreted it as a form of humiliation lowering
the status of the detainee in respect of the interrogators.
George brought with him into the room a black cable, which might have been a shredded
electrical cable. It was about two feet long. It was probably made of rubber, but was not hollow.
Mr. Arar says that as soon as he saw the cable he started to cry. George told Mr. Arar to open
his right hand. George then raised the cable high and brought it down hard. Mr. Arar
remembers the moment vividly. He says that he felt like a bad Syrian school boy. He stood up
and started jumping, but was forced back down and the process was repeated with his left hand.
Again Mr. Arar jumped up. No question had yet been asked. This technique seems to parallel
the sudden slap used on Mr. Almalki, which snapped him into another world. Mr. Arar's
reaction was the same. He really began to fear what was coming.
From then on, Mr. Arar was forced to stand near the door, and the questions began. The constant
theme was "you are a liar". He was given breaks and put in another room where he could hear
other people screaming. Sometimes he was blindfolded and left to stand in the hallway for an
hour or more. The screaming continued. It is notable that the only time Mr. Arar completely
broke down while I was interviewing him was when he described the screams of women being
beaten and the cries of the babies that some of the women had with them in the detention centre.
Mr. Arar was made "very fearful" hearing any screams. When he was brought back into the
interrogation room, he would be beaten about the upper body and asked more questions. Mostly,
he was asked about his relations with various people. On the second day in Far Falestin, the
interrogation lasted for roughly ten hours.
Day three, October 11, 2002, was the most "intensive" for Mr. Arar. He was questioned for
sixteen to eighteen hours, with great physical and psychological abuse. The questions focussed in
part on Mr. Almalki. Mr. Arar was beaten with the black cable on numerous occasions
15
throughout the day, and threatened with electric shocks, "the chair" and "the tire". The pattern
was for Mr. Arar to receive three or four lashes with the cable, then to be questioned, and then
for the beating to begin again. After a while, he became so weak that he was disoriented. He
remembers being asked if he had trained in Afghanistan. By this time, he was so afraid and in so
much pain that he replied: "if you want me to say so". He was asked which border he crossed
and whether he had seen Mr. Almalki in Afghanistan. Mr. Arar remembers urinating on himself
twice during this questioning. He had to wear the same clothes for the next two and a half
months. He was "humiliated".
The questions continued to be focussed upon relationships with various people, his family, his
bank accounts, and his salary. Mr. Arar remembers with some bemusement that the interrogators
could not understand what he did for a living; the concept of "services" in the IT business did not
ring true to them. Nor did his salary which they thought was impossibly high. He was beaten
for all these "lies".
After these beatings on day three, the interrogation became less intense physically. There was
much less use of the cables, and more punching and hitting. On the 16th or 17th day of October,
even this beating diminished. But the threats intensified, so that the psychological pressure was
extreme. For example, in the second week of detention he was put in "the tire" but, unlike
Mr. Almalki, was not beaten. But the threat was real. The "chair" was also invoked to scare
him. At the end of each interrogation session an interrogator would say "tomorrow will be
tough" or "tomorrow will be worse for you". Mr. Arar found it almost impossible to sleep for
more than two or three hours a night.
Mr. Arar describes a similar reaction to that of Mr. Almalki. Over time, as the beatings became
less intense, it was the daily horror of living in the tiny, dark and damp cell all alone and with no
reading material (except later, the Koran) that came to be the most disturbing aspect of the
detention. Whereas at first the cell was a refuge from the infliction of physical pain, later it
became a "torture" in its own right. Mr. Arar describes nights alone in his cell where he could
not sleep on the cold concrete floor. He had to turn every fifteen minutes or so. He was
constantly thinking of his family, and worried about their finances and their safety. He was
"bombarded by memories". He remained in this cell for ten months and ten days, and saw
almost no sunlight except for when he was transferred for consular visits. His first visit to the
courtyard of the prison did not take place until April 2003. Mr. Arar describes the cell as "a
grave" and as a "slow death". He remembers that by June or July of 2003, he had reached his
limit. He had tried to keep in shape by doing push ups and pacing in his cell, but he was losing
all hope, and he stopped his modest exercise regime.
On at least two occasions in his cell he completely lost control, and began to scream and to bang
his head against the wall. He felt "dizzy and tired and breathless" and his heart started beating
wildly. Each time, a guard came and let him wash his face. He was not punished, which
surprised him. Over time, Mr. Arar also found himself becoming, as he described it, "more
selfish". Whereas at first his thoughts were mostly about his family, after a few months in
detention he cared only about his daily survival. This is a source of guilt even today.
One of his interrogators, "Khalid", had not seen Mr. Arar for a few months. When he saw
Mr. Arar in July 2003, Khalid said that Mr. Arar's wife would divorce him if she saw him as he
16
was now, thin, listless and crying. The consular visits with Mr. Léo Martel provided some small
hope, and some connection to Mr. Arar's family, but they were also immensely "frustrating".
Mr. Arar remembered one particularly telling detail when I asked him about the walk up and
down the stairs to the interrogation rooms. I simply asked whether he remembered seeing
anything on the stairs. For some time, he could not recollect anything in particular, but then
remembered the presence of a bucket with water on the stairs and what seemed like rubber shoes.
It seems likely that this was the same bucket that Mr. Almalki remembered holding rubber
blindfolds. Mr. Arar never took anything out of the bucket, unlike Mr. Almalki, but on one
occasion when he was mistaken for another prisoner, Mr. Arar was asked to carry the bucket.
That is why he remembered it on the stairs.
On August 20, 2003, Mr. Arar was transferred to Sednaya Prison, where conditions were "like
heaven" compared to those in Far Falestin. He was released from custody on October 5, 2003,
after signing a "confession" given to him in court by a Syrian prosecutor.
I conclude that the treatment of Mr. Arar in Far Falestin constituted torture as understood in
international law. The interrogation techniques used on Mr. Arar, especially in the first three
days but also sporadically in the first two weeks of his detention amounted to torture. The use of
the black cable in particular, and the generalized beatings he endured, could only have been
"intentional". They were meant to inflict severe pain and suffering. The pain was clearly
physical. But in addition, the techniques of humiliation and the creation of intense fear were
forms of psychological torture. This is particularly true of the strategy of blindfolding Mr. Arar
and making him wait for the next interrogation session in a corridor or room where he could hear
the screams of other victims. The threats to use other forms of physical torture, such as the tire
and the chair, also amounted to psychological torture. This was particularly the case for a man
like Mr. Arar who so clearly feared physical violence. The infliction of pain and suffering was
for a purpose considered relevant by international law: the extraction of a confession. As it
happens, Mr. Arar did succumb to the pain and suffering he experienced, and he did "confess".
But even if he had not done so, the purpose of the interrogation techniques would have been the
same. For the purposes of determining if torture occurred, it does not matter whether or not the
confession was "true". Finally, there is no doubt that the perpetrators of the torture were Syrian
public officials. Far Falestin is known to be run by Syrian military intelligence.
Mr. Arar also experienced a second form of torture, created by the appalling conditions of his
detention. In his testimony, recall that Dr. Peter Burns suggested that the conditions of the cell in
which Mr. Arar were held might constitute torture as understood by the Committee Against
Torture:
Assuming that that was established, and assuming the medical evidence supported
it, I would regard it as torture, again subject to the purposive aspect of the
definition. (Burns testimony, p. 5922)
The conditions of the cell are established to my satisfaction. The descriptions offered by
Mr. Arar are matched by those of Messrs. ELMaati and Almalki. The parallels amongst their
respective testimony are so close as to be entirely convincing. The idea of spending months in
such conditions is horrifying. It was meant to be horrifying. The pain and suffering were
17
terrible, especially at a psychological level. The purpose was to break down the victim so that he
would confess. The conditions were created and managed by officials of the Syrian state.
As to the medical evidence, it fully supports both the physical and psychological torture during
interrogation, and the torture of the cell conditions. Mr. Arar authorized me to speak with the
two principal medical practitioners who have cared for him since shortly after his return to
Canada, and he allowed them to share details of his medical history with me. Both expressed
complete confidence in the authenticity of Mr. Arar's story.
Dr. Doug Gruner is a family physician in Ottawa with experience in post-traumatic stress
disorders. He also works as an emergency room doctor in two communities outside Ottawa.
Practicing for roughly a decade, he has worked in Malawi and Tanzania and was with the
International Committee of the Red Cross in East Timor in 2000. In the latter context he saw
people who had been tortured, and who had experienced severe physical and emotional trauma.
Mr. Arar first visited Dr. Gruner in October 2003 on the advice of Amnesty International and has
scheduled regular appointments since then, though they have tailed off in recent months.
Dr. Gruner is also the physician for another person in a position similar to that of Mr. Arar, but
the doctor was assiduous in not confounding the cases. Dr. Gruner did not answer questions if
he feared that some of the information might derive not from Mr. Arar, but from the other
person.
Dr. Gruner told me that the symptoms displayed by Mr. Arar, physically and psychologically,
were completely consistent with the story Mr. Arar told of his confinement and torture. They
were also consistent with similar stories told to Dr. Gruner by torture victims in East Timor. The
details will be discussed later, in the section on the effects of Mr. Arar's experiences on him and
on his family.
Dr. Marta Young holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is a tenured professor at the
University of Ottawa. She specializes in cross-cultural psychology and works on issues related
to refugees, specifically those who have suffered from trauma and torture. Mr. Arar came to see
her five days after his return from Syria on October 10, 2003, again on the recommendation of
Amnesty International. He continued with a cycle of approximately 12 visits.
Dr. Young found that Mr. Arar initially presented as a case completely consistent with recent
trauma. He was in what she described as an "acute post-traumatic phase". She conducted
certain standard tests for post-traumatic stress and depression, and discovered that on two
occasions separated by over six months Mr. Arar scored as "severely" stressed and "moderately
to severely" depressed. These assessments were confirmed by her clinical observations.
Dr. Young stated that the details of the story told to her by Mr. Arar were entirely aligned with
the public chronology of what he said had happened to him, and she emphasized that he began to
tell her his story very soon after arriving back in Canada. She discerned "no sense of
exaggeration or malingering". Indeed, her observations convinced her that Mr. Arar is "a
straight, honest person". As she put it: "he is not making things up". The story is simply too
congruent with her own experience and with the literature on torture victims for that to be at all
likely.
18
In short, the medical reports are consistent with Mr. Arar's testimony which is confirmed by
published reports of patterns of torture in Syria and with the testimony of the three other men I
interviewed who had experienced detention and interrogation in Far Falestin. I find that
Mr. Arar was tortured in Syria.
Effects of Torture
Physical effects
Fortunately, the purely physical effects of the torture suffered by Mr. Arar have mostly proven to
be short-lived. Dr. Gruner reports that when he first examined Mr. Arar there were few physical
signs of torture. This is consistent with Mr. Arar's story that the physical force applied against
him took place in the earliest days of his detention. By the time Dr. Gruner saw Mr. Arar, the
latter had been spared from torture as a part of interrogation for many months. What is more,
Mr. Arar told me that during his detention in Sednaya Prison he had been able to "regain his
physical shape". He had been able to eat better and to exercise.
However, Mr. Arar did have significant physical complaints initially upon his return to Canada
and over the next three to four months. In particular he complained of hip pain, which was likely
associated with sleeping in cramped and damp quarters on a hard floor for over 10 months.
Mr. Arar also complained of pain around his face, head, neck, shoulders, and lower back. As
Dr. Gruner emphasised: "Pain is a difficult thing to pin down. There might not be a lot of
objective findings, yet [it is] still there". In any event, the initial pain has now "resolved
definitively" except that recently Mr. Arar has developed new pain at the top of his two
shoulders which hurt with the lightest pressure. In addition, some of the psychological issues
that I will describe shortly have real physical consequences. For example, teeth grinding caused
by stress contributed to facial pain. Continuing bad dreams disrupt Mr. Arar's sleep to this day.
Psychological effects
Psychologically, Mr. Arar's experiences in Syria have been devastating, though it must also be
said that some of his most difficult psychological challenges arise from his experiences since his
return to Canada. Yet even these experiences can be connected to the Syrian events in that the
detention and torture there has caused many of the events in Canada to take place, notably the
Commission of Inquiry.
Mr. Arar told me that when he was flying home to Canada he was in a "fragile" state. He did not
know who to trust. Dr. Young testified that this lack of trust is a classic symptom of post-
traumatic stress when it is caused by human intervention, what she called "interpersonal trauma",
rather than by a natural occurrence. Every person who has dealt closely with Mr. Arar since his
return emphasised that he is still distrustful. Dr. Monia Mazigh, Mr. Arar's wife, said that it took
him many months to trust anyone apart from her and a few close advisors that she told him he
should trust because of their past work on his behalf.
The distrust is based on continuing fear. Mr. Arar cannot yet contemplate travel by air, even
within Canada. He is afraid that the plane might be diverted to the United States, that he might be
19
seized and that the ordeal could begin again. He is afraid that he will not be able to resume any
"normal" life. He is afraid that his story will not be believed.
This fear and distrust have actually been compounded by his experience of the Commission of
Inquiry. He was particularly disturbed by certain "leaks" from sources allegedly inside the
Canadian Government that cast him in a negative light. These events compounded his sense of
injustice dating from his detention and torture in Syria. All his advisers that I interviewed
emphasised that Mr. Arar was "devastated" by these leaks. Some described him as "hysterical".
He simply could not control his emotions, and it took many hours of constant conversation to
calm him down each time new information surfaced in the press that he thought to be misleading
and unfair.
Dr. Gruner described how Mr. Arar would tire easily. Whereas before the Syrian detention,
Mr. Arar was described by his wife as an energetic, even driven, person now he found it hard to
stay focussed on anything. He would feel overwhelmed if he had more than two meetings in a
day. At other times, his lethargy would break into an unpredictable rage.
One of the most difficult psychological effects of the detention was that Mr. Arar kept sensing
that bugs were crawling over his body, and particularly around his genitals. He thought that the
bugs were real, but they turned out to be psychological creations. In Dr. Gruner's experience,
such thoughts are not unusual for people who have lived for a long time in completely unsanitary
conditions of detention.
I have already mentioned that Dr. Young's observations confirmed testing that showed that
Mr. Arar was suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder and moderate to severe
depression. In her dealings with Mr. Arar, she found him to be a person who likely was "highly
functioning psychologically" before the trauma in Syria. She believed that he must have had a
"good core sense of self" to emerge as he has. However, she noted that for some months he was
"scattered", with a relatively weak attention span, and difficulty staying on topic.
Dr. Mazigh stressed that the man she had married was very focused. He had strong "family
values", and an easygoing nature. Mr. Arar was religiously observant, which was important to
Dr. Mazigh. He did not tend to argue and he could reach compromises. He was also "patient"
and "flexible" with her as a woman who wanted to work outside the home. She described him as
an optimistic person who believed that he could work hard and make a good life for his family.
Dr. Mazigh believes that Mr. Arar always had a strong sense of duty towards his immediate
family. In his religion and culture, as she put it, "a man should work and feed his children and
wife". But she sensed that this attitude was not about power, but about a man's duty to protect
his family. Mr. Arar was apparently very caring to their daughter born in 1997 and was "a
patient father". When his son was born in 2002, he turned out to be colicky. Mr. Arar would
take the baby for car rides to try to settle him. Of course, Mr. Arar was absent for much of the
boy's second year of life.
Dr. Mazigh met Mr. Arar at the airport in Montreal upon his return from Syria. She was shocked
to discover a man who was submissive, without any light in his eyes. As she put it, he "looked
like a dog" and he seemed "lost". He was preoccupied with his safety and was completely
distrustful. Over the next few days, as the family spent time together in Montreal, Mr. Arar
20
began to tell his story. He was completely disjointed, with random memories and continuous
crying. He could not eat or sleep for two or three days.
Dr. Mazigh reported that for many weeks Mr. Arar seemed "confused". He would pace back and
forth, as if still in his cell, as he talked to his wife. He was always tired. He told Dr. Mazigh
that he just wanted "a normal life", a phrase he repeated to me on several occasions. Normalcy
meant no conflict. Mr. Arar told his wife: "I am not going to argue with you at all". She
thought that he hoped to be "an ideal person".
Instead, over the next few months, Mr. Arar continued to have nightmares, especially about
"George". He was continually afraid and fragile. He was often suspicious and believed that he
was being watched. [I do not imply necessarily that he was not being watched]. His memory
has been far weaker than before his time in Syria. He felt so overwhelmed that he forgot to pay
bills, and he often lost his keys. He still complains often of headaches and of the "stress" that he
feels.
A particularly telling indication of the psychological trauma still facing Mr. Arar is that he has
found it very hard to read the Koran since returning to Canada. He read the Koran every day in
Far Falestin, as soon as the holy book was provided to him. He has been a devout and observant
Muslim at least since his student days at McGill. Dr. Gruner emphasized how often Mr. Arar
had spoken about this problem of not reading the Koran. Mr. Arar is not sure why he has faced
this difficulty.
Family and community effects
Mr. Arar told me that he feels guilty about how he now relates to his own family. He often feels
emotionally distant and preoccupied with his own concerns. He is impatient with the children,
and finds that he cannot spend time with them on their terms. He often takes phone calls when
he is supposed to be with the children in the park, for example. His daughter gets angry when
this happens. Although both children seem to be functioning well, Mr. Arar thinks that they
must feel his distance.
Dr. Mazigh certainly senses this distance. She also noted that Mr. Arar defers to her on almost
all decisions. That aspect of their relationship has become "awkward", to employ the word
chosen by Dr. Mazigh. Mr. Arar seems to need his wife to be strong and in control, while he
feels weak and disoriented. But at the same time, he is not comfortable with his position of
dependence.
Although both spouses were circumspect on the question, I could sense that Mr. Arar's focus on
the Commission of Inquiry and upon his concerns over "security" issues generally have become
a significant source of tension. Other close observers told me that Mr. Arar was "fixated" and
"obsessed" with having his story told, with the proceedings of the Commission of Inquiry, and
with the fate of other people in detention. Dr. Mazigh mentioned that when the Commission of
Inquiry was not sitting, Mr. Arar was calmer than when it was in session. A friend of Mr. Arar's
told me that even on a family hike in the Gatineau Hills near Ottawa the only thing Mr. Arar
could talk about was the Inquiry.
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Since his return, Mr. Arar has had a difficult relationship with the Muslim community in Canada.
Dr. Young noted that socially isolating behaviour is common for victims of torture. This may
relate to feelings of distrust. Mr. Arar stopped going to the mosque that he had previously
attended. He told me that he is disappointed with the reaction of many Muslims to him and his
story. Whereas other Canadians sometimes come up to him on the street to share a sense of
solidarity, most Muslims stay far away from him. Mr. Arar thought that this distancing was
exacerbated after the press "leaks" mentioned previously. He feared that many Muslims "do not
understand the principle of justice" and the need for its constant defence. Although many
members of the Muslim community had helped Dr. Mazigh during the period of Mr. Arar's
detention in Syria, he had received little help since returning to Canada. Mr. Arar's sense of
isolation from the Muslim community was emphasized by other close observers that I
interviewed
Economic effects
Although the psychological effects of Mr. Arar's detention and torture in Syria have been
serious, the economic effects have been close to catastrophic, at least from the perspective of a
middle class engineer who has had to rely on social assistance to feed, clothe and house his
family. Every person I interviewed who knows Mr. Arar well stressed that his inability to find a
job since returning to Canada has had a devastating effect upon both his psychological state and
his family finances.
Mr. Arar told me that his lack of employment was "destroying" him. Dr. Mazigh noted that it
was a source of tension between her and her husband. She was encouraging him to look as
widely as possible for any job, whereas he was still fixed upon finding a job in his field,
computer engineering. Dr. Young believed that Mr. Arar's employment status was one of the
"most distressing" aspects of his current situation. Failing to find a job has also encouraged
Mr. Arar's sense of estrangement from the Muslim community: it is the most concrete example
of a failure to help him when he needed help. Mr. Arar has sent out hundreds of email inquiries
and letters, and has had few responses. When he has been able to speak directly with prospective
employers, some of his advisors told me that he has been dealt with abruptly and coldly. In
various contacts it has been made abundantly clear that he is not hireable because of his negative
notoriety.
To put Mr. Arar's inability to find a job in proper context, it is important to note that Mr. Arar
seems to find much of his self-worth through his work. He is the most educated member of his
family, the youngest child of a mother who pushed him to succeed in his studies. He is
immensely proud of his engineering credentials, and has a strong self image as a successful and
highly competent professional. He was pleased to be asked to travel for his work. As he
described his past work experience and his commitment to various projects, a picture emerged of
a man who might even be described as a workaholic. Mr. Arar took a job in Boston while
leaving his wife behind in Canada with their first child while she completed her Ph.D. He did so
because he was ambitious and thought that this was the best job on offer at the time, with the best
prospects for the future. Mr. Arar cared deeply about his earning potential.
In the light of subsequent events, it is ironic that Mr. Arar seemed to harbour strongly positive
feelings about American business culture. He told me, and this was confirmed by other
22
observers, that he found American business people more professional, more competent and more
committed than most Canadians he had dealt with. He seemed to believe that his future would
lie in business contacts in the United States. He returned to Canada from the United States
hoping to remain a consultant for his American employer. Boston was exciting professionally,
but too expensive. He wanted to re-unite his family in the safe and relatively inexpensive
environment of Ottawa where the family's standard of living would be best protected.
That dream has collapsed utterly. The most recent information available to me is that Mr. Arar
has finally been offered a small part time position as a computer advisor in his daughter's school.
This is small comfort for a man who prided himself on his growing earning capacity.
Conclusion and Summary of Findings
I conclude that Mr. Maher Arar was subjected to torture in Syria. The effects of that experience,
and of consequent events and experiences in Canada, have been profoundly negative for
Mr. Arar and his family. Although there have been few lasting physical effects, Mr. Arar's
psychological state was seriously damaged and he remains fragile. His relationships with
members of his immediate family have been significantly impaired. Economically, the family
has been devastated.
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Appendix A
Bibliography
Amnesty International, Report 2002, Syria (2002)
Case Notes of Dr. Donald Payne (1992-94).
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2003, Syria (2003)
Syrian Human Rights Committee, SHRC Annual Report-2003,
www.shrc.org/english/reports/2003/annual_report/c5.htm (2003)
United Nations, Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment (1984).
United States Department of State, 2004 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, Syria
(2005)
United States Department of State, 2002 Country Report on Human Rights Practices, Syria
(2003)
Testimony before the Public and in camera Sessions of the Commission of Inquiry
Top Secret Canadian Government Assessments of Human Rights in Syria and other classified
documents
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Appendix B
INTERVIEWS
Abdullah Almalki
Maher Arar
Ahmad Abou-ELMaati
Doug Gruner
Monia Mazigh
Alex Neve
Muayyed Nureddin
Kerry Pither
Riad Saloojee
Marta Young
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