Arar #13: Degrees of Separation--Analysis/Speculation

This is speculation on my part, and should be treated as such. I want to emphasize that, because these are serious charges.

But: it seems to me that the most likely explanation for how suspicion went from El-Maati, to Almalki, to Arar (and from either El-Maati or Almalki to Al-Buchi), is that a suspect confessed and named his associates (truly or falsely, but it's not a source of information I'd ever rely on) under torture in Syria; Syria gave the information back to United States and Canadian intelligence; which asked Syria to detain and interrogate the next suspect; who confessed and named his associates (truly or falsely) under torture; and Syria gave the information back to the United States. and Canadian intelligence....etc.

Let me summarize my reasons for believing this:

1. As I noted before, the United States went to a fair degree of trouble, and probably broke the law, to deport Arar to Syria. I don't think eating lunch one time with a suspected terrorist, or having a suspected terrorist sign your lease, normally rates an "extraordinary rendition". There must have been something more.

2. The timing fits:
--Ahmad El-Maati was arrested in November 2001. Badr El-Maati says his son was tortured and forced to sign a false confession in Syria, before being transferred to Egypt in January of 2002. January 2002 was when the police (or CSIS, or whoever) executed the warrants against Almalki and his family, and questioned Arar's wife about her husband.
--In April 2002, Arar has his U.S. work permit renewed without incident. In September 2002 he is taken into custody while changing planes, and the U.S. deems him too dangerous to send to Canada or Zurich. What has changed? INS incompetence is always a possibility, so perhaps they renewed his permit in error. But I think the more likely explanation is that Almalki was arrested in May, questioned about Arar under torture, and confessed to who knows what.
--Arwad Al-Buchi is also arrested after Almalki.

3. A few specific statements from U.S. and Canadian intelligence officials to the press:
--"Sources told CTV News the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has received the transcripts of the Syrian interrogation of Arar." (link)
--"American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the evidence was strong that Mr. Arar had associated with suspected Islamic militants over a long period in Canada. They say he confessed under torture in Syria that he had gone to Afghanistan for terrorist training, named his instructors and gave other intimate details." (NY Times, 11/15/03, p. A4).

4. There have been other reports of U.S. intelligence collaborating with Syria, including:
-- a Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker last year (which specifically mentions a plot on targets in Ottawa).
--This, from an NBC Nightly News report on September 5, 2002:

FRED FRANCIS reporting:

In the Syrian capital, where a dictatorship has ruled for decades, where most people resent the US for branding Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, virtually no one would believe that the CIA has made an ally of the Syrian secret police. Earlier this year, in the Persian Gulf, US troops were saved from an al-Qaeda attack because of information from Syria. Dr. Georges Jabbour often speaks unofficially for Syria.

Mr. GEORGES JABBOUR (Former Syrian Advisor): We supply the United States with any information we have on terrorist activities of al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that we consider terrorists. And this does not mean that we agree with the United States on what she considers to be terrorism and terrorists.

FRANCIS: In fact, the information from Bashar Assad's government is so golden, that the US is cutting Syria a break on illicit Iraqi oil. In exchange for continuing information to the CIA, Washington is really looking the other way as Syria continues to import as much as 200,000 barrels of Iraqi crude oil each day. The oil from Iraq's Kirkuk fields is flowing in an old, unused pipeline, according to US Officials. Syria denies it, but senior US officials say Syria is lying. And Syria is paying Iraq only $14 a barrel, half the market price. A $3 billion-a-year bonanza for Syria and Iraq. Money, a senior US official says, is going into Saddam Hussein's slush fund.

Mr. JEFFREY SCHOTT (Institute for International Economics): He certainly needs to have money to support his elite troops and to keep them--keep them happy.

FRANCIS: The US is looking the other way, US officials say, because the man who recruited some of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammed Zammar, is now in a Syrian prison, and the CIA has access to him. Zammar is being questioned here at Syrian secret police headquarters. US sources say he is talking as are two dozen other al-Qaeda members also imprisoned.

Mr. ITAMAR RABINOVICH (Former Israeli Ambassador to US): I would say that the questioning in Damascus is going to be more brutal and more effective than in Guantanamo or in Washington.

Oddly enough, until Arar each suspect travelled to Syria voluntarily. Which lessens our culpability to a degree, but only to a degree. It's one thing to cooperate with foreign intelligence services, including those of very nasty regimes. That's a necessarily evil. It's another thing to tell them which Canadian citizens to arrest, and look the other way as they torture those people, and rely on the information "confessed" under torture to deport other Canadian citizens into their hands. I don't know that that's what happened, but it seems a real possibility. It needs to be investigated, on both sides of the border.

It's almost a side issue, but there still is the perennial question--who is innocent and who is guilty? Of course I don't know. They could all be innocent, they could all be guilty. But you know I think Arar is not guilty. I'm pretty confident that the Amer El-Maati, the one on the FBI's wanted list whose papers were found in an Al Qaeda safe house in Kabul, is guilty. And there was certainly plenty of reasons to suspect Ahmad El-Maati, but the Egyptian officials released him and the Canadian official who spoke to the Globe and Mail seems to think it more likely than not that he was innocent ("I would say the chance of it [a plot] being likely was 35 per cent, and 65 per cent not"), and seems pretty defensive about the whole thing. (“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.”) I've not read enough information about Arwad Al-Buchi to begin to guess. As for Abdullah Almalki, his brother, as I've said, seems very credible to me. Is he really only accused of selling computer equipment to terrorists through indirect back channels? Obviously I wouldn't condone that. But--even if you'd decided that you will look the other way as Syria tortures and interrogates suspects--I'd think you would reserve it for higher level, more dangerous stuff than selling computer equipment. And yet not only is Almalki still in Syria, but Arar was deported there because of his connection with Almalki.

Comments

[Yukoner]

Katherine,
I want to extend my thanks to you for the work you've done putting this story together.

When it first broke in Canada it seemed an open and shut case of "the US goes beserk" with just the slightest whiff of "did the RCMP and CSIS have any role?"

It's become increasingly clear that Canadian agencies have been in it up to their necks. The politicians have been ducking and weaving. I've now joined the (hopefully swelling) numbers calling for a full and public inquiry into the whole mess on the Canadian side.

Yukoner