Maher Arar

Maher Arar (ماهر عرار) (born 1970) is a telecommunications engineer with dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship who has resided in Canada since 1987.

Maher Arar was born in Syria in 1970 and moved to Canada with his parents at the age of 17 in 1987 to avoid mandatory military service.

In 1991, Arar became a Canadian citizen.

Arar 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 (a branch of the Université du Québec) in Montreal.

While studying at McGill University, Arar met Monia Mazigh.

Arar and Mazigh married in 1994.

Mazigh holds a PhD in finance from McGill University.

They have two children: Barâa and Houd.

In December 1997, Arar moved with his family to Ottawa from Montreal and listed Abdullah Almalki as his "emergency contact" with his landlord.

Before Project A-O Canada was created, CSIS had been monitoring Almalki at least since 1998 with respect to his relationship with Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian-born Canadian and alleged senior associate of Osama bin Laden.

CSIS was also concerned with Almalki's electronic components export business that he operated with his wife.

Almalki, however, was purely a person of interest and was not, in fact, the target of the investigation.

Nonetheless, Almalki's meeting with Arar appears to have prompted a wider investigation, with Arar also becoming a "person of interest."

While testifying at the Guantanamo military commission for alleged child soldier Omar Khadr, FBI agent Robert Fuller testified that Khadr had identified Maher Arar as among the al-Qaeda militants he met while in Afghanistan.

In 1999, he moved again to Boston to work for MathWorks, a job that required a considerable amount of travel within the United States.

In 2001, Arar returned to Ottawa to start his own consulting company, Simcomms Inc. At the time of his rendition, Arar was employed in Ottawa as a telecommunications engineer.

On September 22, 2001, Jack Hooper, the director general of the Toronto region of Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), chaired a meeting of members of CSIS, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Ontario Provincial Police, Toronto Police Service, and Peel Regional Police.

On September 24, 2001, the RCMP's "O" Division in Toronto created a joint force investigative team called Project O Canada to handle national security investigations.

The Toronto team included RCMP investigators and members of the Ontario, Peel, and Toronto police forces.

In October 2001, Inspector Garry Clement, officer of the RCMP "A" Division in Ottawa, told RCMP Inspector Michel Cabana that Toronto's Project O Canada needed a team in Ottawa to help with its investigations of an Ottawa man named Abdullah Almalki.

In response, Project A-O Canada was created.

Garry Clement told Michel Cabana that the team would be working closely with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Later on, the Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar revealed that there were no clear directions to RCMP officers regarding how to share information with the FBI and the CIA.

Richard Proulx, a RCMP officer and then assistant RCMP commissioner, was the official singled out in the report for failing to provide these clear directions.

The A-O Canada team included investigators and members from: the RCMP commercial crimes unit, "A" Divisions IPOC unit; the RCMP National Security Investigations Branch (NSIS), CSIS, the Ottawa Police, Gatineau Police, Hull Police and Ontario Provincial Police; the Sûreté du Québec; the Canada Border Services Agency; and the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, and the support of lawyers from the Canadian Justice Department.

After he had moved back to Ottawa, Arar had a meeting with Abdullah Almalki on October 12, 2001.

Almalki, an Ottawa engineer, was also born in Syria and had moved to Canada in the same year as Arar.

They met at the Mango Café, a popular shawarma restaurant in a strip mall and talked about doctors and bought a print cartridge together.

At the time their movements were under close scrutiny by teams of Project A-O Canada.

Arar was detained during a layover at John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis.

He was held without charges in solitary confinement in the United States for nearly two weeks, questioned, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer.

The US government suspected him of being a member of Al Qaeda and deported him, not to Canada, his current home and the passport on which he was travelling, but to Syria.

He was detained in Syria for almost a year, during which time he was tortured, according to the findings of a commission of inquiry ordered by the Canadian government, until his release to Canada.

The Syrian government later stated that Arar was "completely innocent."

A Canadian commission publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism, and the government of Canada later settled out of court with Arar.

He received C$10.5 million and Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to Arar for Canada's role in his "terrible ordeal."

Arar's story is frequently referred to as "extraordinary rendition" but the US government insisted it was a case of deportation.

Arar, represented by lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York, Arar v. Ashcroft, seeking compensatory damages and a declaration that the actions of the US government were illegal and violated his constitutional, civil, and international human rights.

After the lawsuit was dismissed by the Federal District Court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal on November 2, 2009.

The Supreme Court of the United States declined to review the case on June 14, 2010.