A World Of Arars

Mr. Arar's ordeal, and the wealth of investigations and recriminations that have followed in Canada, has provoked a deep sense of alarm in European politics this week. This Syrian-Canadian's case, the abject apology he received from Prime Minister Stephen Harper last month and the bewildering lack of acknowledgment from Washington, has made a half-dozen governments realize that they may soon face similar public self-examinations. The possibility, revealed in a European Union report last week, that as many as 20 more Arar-like cases may be emerging within Europe, is souring relations between Europe and the U.S. in anti-terrorism operations, and between European governments and their own people in electoral politics. Major court cases are under way in Germany and Italy against domestic and U.S. agents for kidnapping citizens and sending them to Muslim countries to be tortured — cases that could implicate senior government officials and tarnish national leaders, as they have in Canada. It is fair to say that Mr. Arar's spectre claimed its first major victim on Wednesday in Rome, when a parliamentary conflict over co-operation with the U.S. "war on terrorism," tainted by the use of Italian airports to transport Mr. Arar and others to sites of torture, led to the collapse of Italy's government. Those 37 minutes that Mr. Arar spent on the tarmac in Rome, apparently with the consent of Italian authorities under anti-terrorism agreements with the U.S., have now become part of the controversy. An Italian magistrate, Salvatore Vitello, will travel to Canada later this winter as part of his investigation to determine whether Italians and Americans were guilty of kidnapping. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070224.wararus0224/BNStory/International/home

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