Maher Arar

Maher Arar was born in Syria in 1970 — the Arabic article gives his birth day as 15 September 1970 — and has lived in Canada since 1987.¹² He earned a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from McGill University and a master's degree in telecommunications from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Quebec.¹ Arar became internationally known after United States authorities detained him in New York in 2002 and deported him to Syria, where he was imprisoned for 374 days; a Canadian public inquiry later cleared him of any link to terrorism, and the Canadian government apologised to him and paid him compensation in 2007.¹

Arar met Monia Mazigh while studying at McGill, and they married in 1994.² From 1999 he worked for MathWorks in Boston.¹ In September 2002, United States authorities detained him during a layover at JFK airport in New York while he was returning from a family holiday in Tunis, held him for about two weeks in solitary confinement, and deported him to Syria rather than to Canada.¹ Arar was released on 5 October 2003, with the Syrian authorities announcing that they had found no links connecting him to terrorism.¹ His wife, Monia Mazigh, led a public campaign in Canada calling for his release throughout his imprisonment.¹ Canada appointed a commission of inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor, whose report of September 2006 cleared Arar completely and found that Canadian officials had passed inaccurate information about him to the United States authorities.¹ RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli apologised on 28 September 2006 for the RCMP's role in the case.¹ On 26 January 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologised to Arar and announced a settlement of C$10.5 million plus legal costs.¹ The United States nevertheless kept Arar on its watchlists despite the Canadian exoneration.¹ Arar's lawsuit against United States officials was dismissed; the Second Circuit upheld the dismissal on 2 November 2009, and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case on 14 June 2010.¹

In January 2010 Arar founded PRISM, an online magazine concerned with national-security and civil-liberties issues.¹ Time's Canadian edition named him Canadian Newsmaker of the Year for 2004, and he was included in the Time 100 list for 2007.¹ He received human-rights honours including the Council of Canadians Human Rights Award in 2005, the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in 2006, and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association's Reg Robson Award in 2007.¹ Nipissing University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2007, and The Globe and Mail named him a Nation Builder for 2006.¹

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum. The article records that the Syrian authorities denied that Arar was tortured in prison, while the O'Connor inquiry, on the evidence it gathered, concluded that he had been tortured.¹ The sources leave a standing contrast between the Canadian position, which ended in apology and compensation, and the United States position, which kept his name on a watchlist and whose courts dismissed his lawsuit against its officials.¹

• Maher Arar — English Wikipedia¹
• Maher Arar — Arabic Wikipedia²
• Maher Arar — Urdu Wikipedia³
• Maher Arar — Wikidata Q1884857⁴