"what does that say about our shameful silence?"

Thank you, Thomas Walkom.

U.S. security trumps freedom
by Thomas Walkom

Ottawa's decision to compensate Canadian Maher Arar for its role in his unlawful imprisonment and torture contains a warning and a lesson.

The warning is that Canada and the U.S. are on fundamentally different paths when it comes to matters of terrorism and human rights. The lesson is that until Ottawa gets more aggressive with our friends in the war on terror, a Canadian passport won't mean much.

First the warning. The U.S. has chosen to subordinate the principles of individual freedom to what it sees as its security needs. It jails people indefinitely without charge, utilizes interrogation methods that the United Nations describes as torture, wages illegal wars and commits the very crimes against humanity it once helped to prosecute.

For America's friends, this is heartbreaking to watch.

At first, the Canadian government tried to skate by this new troubling reality. It refused to give unqualified support to the U.S. war on Iraq, but participated eagerly in its invasion of Afghanistan.

It passed draconian anti-terror laws but was loath to use them, preferring to hand over Canadian suspects (St. Catharines resident Mohamed Mansour Jabarah being the most notable example) to U.S. authorities to do with as they saw fit.

It didn't raise a peep when the U.S. imprisoned Canadian teenager Omar Khadr in its notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Finally, as Justice Dennis O'Connor's judicial inquiry concluded, while Canadian authorities didn't have any reason to arrest computer engineer Arar, they happily gave the U.S. information (much of it wrong) that helped convince the Americans to do just that.

The U.S. then promptly sent him to Syria to be tortured.

If it had not been for the chain of events that this unleashed, Canada might still be happily muddling along its inconsistent path.

But the Arar case made the contradictions of post-9/11 Canada-U.S. relations so clear that even Americanophile Stephen Harper has to acknowledge them.

"It has raised concerns," the Prime Minister said yesterday when asked at a news conference if, in light of the Arar matter, his government will be able to trust Washington.

That puts it mildly. Thanks to Arar, the two governments are fundamentally at loggerheads over how to handle security issues.

The U.S. administration insists it was right to send Arar to Syria to be tortured.

Ottawa, on the other hand, has concluded that what Canada and the U.S. did to Arar was unjustified – to such an extent that it's willing to compensate him at a cost of more than $10.5 million.

But if we are so far apart on this case, what does this say about Canada-U.S. co-operation in other areas of the so-called war on terror?

What does that say, for instance, about our role in the U.S.-inspired counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan? What does that say about our shameful silence on the matter of Khadr, who faces a Guantanamo tribunal so flawed that even American military lawyers have condemned it?

That's the warning.

The lesson is that in the post- 9/11 world Canada must better protect its own citizens – not from our enemies but from our friends.

O'Connor detailed the failings on the part of the Canadian government when it came to Arar, and in particular Ottawa's reluctance to make a concerted effort on behalf of someone tarred with the terror brush.

Yet, it seems this lesson has not yet been learned.

Canada is doing its usual tiptoeing over the fate of Chinese-born Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil, who was imprisoned while visiting in-laws in Uzbekistan last spring, deported to China and jailed.

China's excuse is that Celil is a terrorist.

When Harper, to his credit, attempted to take a more aggressive line with Beijing, he was roundly pilloried by Canadian business interests for threatening their opportunities in China. So, he quieted down.

More recently, Ottawa has maintained the same kind of no-muss, no-fuss approach in the case of Bashir Makhtal, a Canadian citizen living and working in Somalia.

When the latest civil unrest erupted there last month, Makhtal took the Canadian government's advice and fled Somalia, only to be arrested by Kenyan authorities when he tried to enter that country.

He was jailed and deported – not to Canada, where he is a citizen, but to Somalia where he is not (Makhtal was born in Ethiopia). Indeed, his family fears that Makhtal, whose grandfather was once a secessionist rebel in Ethiopia, has been passed on to that country – where he is unlikely to receive tender treatment.

Our friends the Kenyans apparently think Makhtal was somehow connected to the deposed Islamic government in Somalia, which according to the U.S. government makes him terror-linked.

This, if true, would be interesting but beside the point. If Makhtal is a terrorist, he can be tried here – just as Arar could have been tried here had there been any reason to do so. (There was not.)

The point is that, like Arar, Bashir Makhtal, Huseyin Celil and Omar Khadr are Canadian citizens.

If that label means anything, it means Ottawa should do for them what it did not do for Maher Arar.

It should move heaven and earth to bring them home.