Canada to Pay Arar $10.5 Million for Syria Ordeal

By Randall Palmer

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada apologized on Friday to software engineer Maher Arar, who was deported to Syria by U.S. agents after Canadian police mistakenly labeled him an Islamic extremist, and paid him C$10.5 million ($8.9 million) in compensation.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was arrested during a stopover in New York in 2002 on his way home to Canada from a holiday. He has said he was repeatedly tortured during the year he spent in Damascus jails.

U.S. officials deported Arar after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said he was a suspected Islamic extremist, but an official Canadian inquiry said there was no evidence he was linked to terrorism.

The deportation has become a sore spot in Canada-U.S. relations, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper renewed his call for Washington to remove Arar from its security watch list as he announced the settlement on Friday.

"On behalf of the government of Canada, I wish to apologize to you, Monia Mazigh (Arar's wife) and your family for any role Canadian officials may have played in the terrible ordeal that all of you experienced in 2002 and 2003," Harper said in a letter of apology which he read at a news conference.

In addition to the C$10.5 million, an Arar lawyer said the government would pay for C$1 million in legal fees.

Arar said afterwards that he could not begin to say how much Harper's statement and the compensation meant. Continued...