Arar #12: Degrees of Separation--Facts

(sorry for the delay--I am ridiculously nervous about Iowa & couldn't concentrate. As promised--this is my best attempt at summarizing the chain of associations and events that led to Maher Arar's deportation to Syria. I will give my analysis of this information in the next post.)

1. INTRODUCTION
Shortly after Maher Arar was returned to Canada but before he spoke to the press, Canadian officials told CTV News that:

while in custody in Syria for almost a year, Canadian Maher Arar provided information to the Syrians about al Qaeda cells operating in Canada.

They say Arar also provided information about the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic group linked to Osama bin Laden, and information about four other Canadians: Arwad al-Bushi, a Syrian-born Canadian being held in a Syrian jail; Abdullah al Malki, another Syrian-born Canadian being held in Syria; Ahmad Abou-el-Maati, an Eyptian Canadian in custody in Egypt; and Mohamed Harkat, born in Algeria, who is being held under an anti-terrorism security certificate at the Ottawa Detention Centre....

Sources told CTV News the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has received the transcripts of the Syrian interrogation of Arar. (Source: CTV transcript, 10/24/03.

2. AHMAD ABOU EL-MAATI. In August of 2001, truck driver Ahmad Abou El-Maati is stopped at the U.S.-Canada border. Guards find in his 18 wheeler "a schematic map of Ottawa marking government buildings and nuclear research facilities." He is interrogated for eight hours, and denies owning the map--but he later showed it to a friend:

“He showed me the map. And the map had literally all kinds of government installations,” said a man who used to know him. “If I was a border person and I saw this map with a Middle Eastern-looking person and all these nuclear sites and all these government installations I can understand why they said, ‘Well, hey pal, what are you doing?' And apparently they really grilled him. When he came to me he was nearly in tears he was shaken up so bad about it.”

For the next few months he is "dogged by counterterrorism agents." At some point after 9/11 the RMCP exercises 7 search warrants looking for explosives and diagrams of buildings Ottawa.

"That November Mr. El-Maati left Canada, telling friends and family the map was not his and that he was going to leave the suspicion behind and go be with the young wife he met in Syria a few months earlier.

He had told friends that CSIS was following him and scuttling his attempts to bring his wife to Canada. At the same time, sources say, counterterrorism agents were telling Mr. El-Maati's associates that he had been to Afghanistan and they wanted to orchestrate a sting operation against him. Mr. El-Maati was arrested when he stepped off the plane in Syria."

(Source for all of the above: Globe and Mail, 1/16/04.)

El-Maati's father, Badr El-Maati, has told the Toronto Sun that Canada's intelligence service tried to recruit his son some time before he went to Syria. (Source: Toronto Sun, 11/13/03, p. 40).

El-Maati's brother, Amer El-Maati, is on the FBI's wanted list for terrorist activities. In November of 2001, a document granting Amer El-Maati Canadian citizenship was discovered in an Al Qaeda safe house in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Chicago Tribune, 11/12/02, p. 11). Badr El-Maati has said that "neither of his sons are terrorists, and that he has not seen Amer in years".

Badr also alleged that Ahmad El-Maati was tortured and forced to sign a false confession in Syria before being transferred to Egypt. (source: Globe and Mail, 11/13/03). He was imprisoned in Egypt for two years; his captors "did not act on several court orders for his release him until it let him go this week. Just why they decided to do so now is unclear." (Globe and Mail, 1/16/04).

It certainly seems there was a strong basis for suspecting Ahmad El-Maati, but of course that does not necessarily mean he was guilty:

His Middle Eastern captors no longer regard him as a suspect. And in Canada, where no one has ever been charged with a crime as a result of the investigation, the probe is being described as a necessary precaution.

“I would say the chance of it [a plot] being likely was 35 per cent, and 65 per cent not, but it's definitely something you have to follow up on,” a government source said Thursday. “You've got to make sure it's not.

“I know a lot of people don't believe this, but we are involved in a war — it's called a war on terror. And in any kind of war, innocents are hurt.” ((Globe and Mail, 1/16/04)

.

Connection to Maher Arar:
a. Arar has said through a spokeswoman that he "once bumped into Mr. El-Maati in a mechanic's garage in Ottawa. (Source: Globe and Mail, 12/31/03).

3. ABDULLAH ALMALKI was the next to be arrested. In January of 2002 Canadian police executed search warrants on the homes of Abdullah Almalki & his family. Almalki himself was in Malaysia at the time, and had been for four or five months: According to his brother Youssef (the only member of the Almalki family who has spoken to the press):

Well he, his wife, when they left Canada it was in November 2001. She was expecting their fifth child so she decided to visit her mom. Her mom, her father passed away so her mom was alone. So she decided to go take that opportunity before she delivered to go see her mom....So they said ok we'll go in November and come back for Christmas of that year. She goes there. Her pregnancy isn't doing too well so she decided to stay to have her baby there. So. She had her baby in February or March.

(source: CBC news interview with Youssef Almalki. This interview is where most of my information on Almalki comes from--assume that Youssef Almalki's statements in this interview are the source unless I say otherwise. A lot of the information is duplicated in other sources, but this is the most complete. I strongly encourage you to read it. As with Arar, I find Youssef Almalki very sympathetic and very credible.)

The police tell Youssef Almalki that he's being questioned because of his brother Abdullah:

And they said my brother Abdullah they suspect him of sending uh computer equipment, components and sub-components to companies which in turn sold it to other companies, which in turn sold it to other companies, which eventually made it's way to terrorists.

The police seized computers, files & documents, and personal items from Abudullah Almalki's home, which they still have, under a sealed warrant which has been extended several times.

(According to the Globe and Mail, this is one of the seven warrants for blueprints and explosives that was executed in relation to El-Maati's map.)

That spring, Abdullah Almalki decides to visit his parents in Syria--they live in Canada but are retired and visit Syria once a year. The Syrian government encourages tourism like this, so they allow joint citizens to check and make sure they will not face imprisonment or legal trouble (e.g., for evading military service) when they return. They give him the go ahead. But when Abdullah Almalki arrives in Syria in May, he is arrested at the airport (his mother sees this happen) and imprisoned.

He is still in custody in Syria. Maher Arar told the press that,

On around September 19 or 20, I heard the other prisoners saying that another Canadian had arrived there. I looked up, and saw a man, but I did not recognize him. His head was shaved, and he was very, very thin and pale. He was very weak. When I looked closer, I recognized him. It was Abdullah Almalki. He told me he had also been at the Palestine Branch,and that he had also been in a grave like I had been ­ except he had been in it longer.

He told me he had been severely tortured ­ with the tire, and the cable. He was also hanged upside down. He was tortured much worse than me. He had also been tortured when he was brought to Sednaya, so that was only two weeks before.

(Source: Arar's statement.)

Connection to Maher Arar:
a. Arar was the co-worker of Almalki's brother, and their families came from Syria to Canada at about the same time. (I don't know if that's Youssef Almalki or a third brother; since Youssef is in medical school in a different city, I'd guess it's not him.)
b. Almalki co-signed the lease of Arar's Ottawa apartment in 1997. U.S. officials confronted Arar with this lease during his interrogation. Arar says this is because he'd contacted Almalki's brother, who was not available.
c. Almalki and Arar ate lunch together at a fast food restaurant once, and were apparently observed by the Canadian police. Arar describes the incident this way in a TV interview:

MAHER ARAR: I used to see his brother at work, and sometimes at the mosque on Friday prayers, and so most of the time we talked business. And I told him I needed a printer cartridge for my printer, and he said, "My brother knows a salesman at Future Shop," and so I remember I called his brother and I said, you know, "can we see each other? I want to go to Future Shop." And he said, "No problem." And when we went there, we didn't find the salesman, so what we did, we went to a nearby fast-food restaurant, and then we had lunch, and then we headed back to the Future Shop. I bought the cartridge and I went back home.

ANNA-MARIA TREMONTI (REPORTER): And that was it, but somehow, again, somebody was watching you do all this, that you now know?

MAHER ARAR: I was very surprised when the Americans knew all about this. Whether I was under surveillance or he was under surveillance, I have no clue. I was very shocked. They mentioned to me a restaurant's name, "Mango," and I didn't remember it because it's the first time I went there., and because I didn't even care about the restaurant's name.

(source: CBC TV interview, November 6, 2003.)

d. As noted above, Arar encountered Almalki in prison in Syria.

4. ARWAD AL-BUCHI (also spelled Arwad Al-Bouchi), like Almalki, is still in prison in Syria. Al-Buchi has Canadian citizenship, but was living in Saudi Arabia before his arrest. Because of this, and because none of his relatives have spoken to the press, his case has gotten much less press coverage than the others'. According to the Syrian Human Rights Committee (the same human rights group that first reported Maher Arar's torture):

The Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) has been informed by well informed sources in Damascus that Mr. Arwad Mohammed Izat Al-Buchi , a Syrian national from Damascus (1958), and a Canadian naturalized citizen has been held in Syrian prisons since 02/07/2002. (note: I'm 90% sure that this date is being written in the European style, so that's July, not Feb.)

Arwad left Jeddah (K.S.A.) where he worked and lived to Damascus using his Canadian passport to visit his family and homeland following 23 years in exile. Before heading to Syria, he made arrangements for the visit with authorized Syrian authorities which have guaranteed to insure his safety and freedom. However, he was arrested upon his arrival in Damascus Airport.

Fifty days later, on the event of his father’s death, Arwad was released for two weeks as a result of efforts made by the Syrian minister of foreign affairs. Then he was called to a security authority branch to receive a non-pursuit certificate, but that was no more than a trick to re-arrest him on arriving the said branch.

He was detained in Palestine Branch for military interrogation for a long period before he was eventually moved to Sednaya prison on 01/04/2003. SHRC has learnt that Arwad Al-Buchi was tortured, mistreated and held in an isolated underground cell during his confinement in Palestine Branch.

Amnesty International Canada has a similar report here. They note that "it is thought that his suspected association with alleged members of the unauthorized opposition group the Muslim Brotherhood Organization may be the cause for his arrest and detention."

Connection to Arar
None that I can find (excepting the Canadian officials' allegations that Arar gave evidence against Al Buchi). I can't find out how long he'd lived in Saudi Arabia, either.

5. MOHAMED HARKAT Despite the intelligence officials' statements, Harkat's case seems less likely than the others to connected to Arar's. He is not Syrian, nor is he being held in Syria, nor are there any reports that he had contact with Arar in Canada. (he's originally Algerian and is being detained in Ottawa under a "terrorism certificate" that does not list specific charges.) So I'm not going to go into it right now.

Comments

[Slartibartfast]

Hmmm...maybe there's a reason the Canadian government didn't make a bigger stink. The reason being, they were doing the same thing, in spades.

Excellent work, Katherine.

[BruceR]

Just to be clear, Harkat is not a Canadian citizen (he couldn't be held on a CSIS security certificate if he was: that provision only applies to non-citizens). The CTV got that part wrong.

[BruceR]

You may also find my previous "Canadian terrorist roundups" useful, here:

http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2003_10_12.html#001177

and here:

http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2003_11_26.html#003193