I’ve just returned from a lecture given by Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was tortured in Syria after being sent there by the United States. Although Arar’s case is not unique, what makes it special is that he could not be any less of a terrorist, by pretty much all accounts, including the official account of the Canadian federal government (”I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada”).

Arar is something of a folk hero for Canadians, especially Canadian liberals. It’s kind of a holy grail of situations for many progressive Canucks, who yearn for opportunities to both (a) condemn the Canadian government and (b) condemn the American government, yet (c) ultimately be able to point out that the Canadian government is less offensive than the American government. And wow, is this the set of facts for doing all of that:

1. Arar is headed home to Montréal after a vacation in Tunisia.
2. He’s got a layover in JFK (note to Canadians: don’t layover in the US!)
3. US officials detain him, tell him he can’t have a lawyer and that he can’t call a lawyer. He does get to see someone from the Canadian consulate, who tells him, “oh, they won’t send you to Syria—the Americans would never do that.”
4. Then they chain him, shackle him, and send him to Jordan.
5. Jordan hands him over to Syrian Military Intelligence.
6. Arar spends 10 and a half months in a six-foot by three-foot cell, and is tortured and forced to sign a false confession.
7. He’s finally released. Canada launches a full inquiry into the case and finds that the RCMP, Canada’s federal police force, had provided false information on Arar to US officials, information that probably caused his rendition to Syria. It also finds that Arar was really and truly tortured, and that he is not a terrorist and not a threat to national security. Canada and the RCMP apologize to Arar and settle with him for CDN$12 million.

The United States government, for its part, continues to deny any wrongdoing. It continues to deny, in fact, that it has ever rendered anybody to Syria or that it did anything other than “deport” Arar. And it has refused to remove Arar’s name from its no-fly and terrorist watch lists, despite a formal protest from the Government of Canada. Indeed, David Wilkins, US ambassador to Canada (and in whose home I was recently a guest and enjoying the off-color jokes of his drunken South Carolinian good old boy friends, to the point of tears), spoke in Edmonton (while I was in Halifax) and pretty much said “fuck you” to Canada for even suggesting what America should do about Arar. The US ambassador to Canada during the time of the Canadian inquiry (not Wilkins) refused to testify before it. The US Department of Justice won dismissal of Arar’s suit against the US government by invoking the state secrets privilege and claiming that even disclosing the reason for detaining Arar in the first place would threaten national security.

The impact of hearing a man who your own country extraordinarily rendered into torture—a man standing closer to you than your professors in law school did—is impossible to describe. Even if you don’t believe Arar or the Canadian inquiry’s findings, hearing the account of Arar’s experience firsthand would be troubling. One of the “lessons” that Arar said we can learn from this is that Canada and the United States do not see the world in the same way; that if he had been an American citizen, he would probably still be in that tiny Syrian cell. It is chilling to realize that he is probably right.