Knox was among the first reporters to call for a public inquiry. Among the questions that required answers, he wrote on October 7, were, “Why was Arar of interest to the rcmp? ” and “Who in Canadian law enforcement said what to which US counterpart about him, and when?” That day, the Star also demanded to know “if the Mounties had Arar shipped to Syria where he faced torture by a despotic regime.” The Montreal Gazette insisted the prime minister “order an immediate, thorough, open, and independent investigation into this matter.” Then Solicitor General Wayne Easter dismissed the growing demands for an inquiry, arguing that the recently repatriated Canadian might be the subject of an internal investigation by a federal police force that was now facing a probe by its own watchdog over its role and conduct in the case.
The stakes were rising for the rcmp and the Liberal government. As the Arar controversy began to envelop powerful institutions and politicians in Ottawa, leaks began to drop like carefully aligned dominos. The first came on October 9, 2003 — it tied Arar to terrorism, undermined the evidence that he had been tortured, and suggested that responsibility lay with him.
In a rare front-page story on Arar by the Toronto Star, parliamentary reporter Graham Fraser quoted an anonymous source “closely involved in the case” as saying that Arar had been arrested in New York because Canadian officials told US authorities that he had been to Afghanistan several times, but they did not have enough evidence to charge him. Fraser’s story echoed Fife’s July piece insofar as an unnamed source implied that Arar had been to Afghani- stan to train at al-Qaeda camps.
The next domino fell a day later. Quoting anonymous “Canadian government sources,” the Globe’s Sallot report-ed that Arar had complained of being “roughed up” and “slapped around” by Jordanian officials during a brief stopover before being “held in appalling physical conditions in a Syrian jail, but not physically tortured.” As Justice O’Connor noted in his report, the cynical aim of the “roughed up” but “not tortured” description was to “downplay the seriousness of the ordeal [Arar] had endured in Syria” in order to protect officials who might be ensnared by the burgeoning scandal. (Shortly after the release of O’Connor’s report, Arar’s lawyer, Lorne Waldman, told Ottawa’s Hill Times newspaper that sources were “shopping” misinformation about his client to reporters. On October 9, 2006, the Hill Times reported that both Fraser and Sallot responded that they had sought out the sources in their stories.)
Through a spokesperson, Arar — who had kept silent since his return to Canada — demanded a public inquiry. The Post chimed in with an editorial on October 11 calling for an inquiry to clear the air.
The third domino fell on October 23, when ctv National News anchor Lloyd Robertson told viewers that the Arar saga had taken a “mysterious turn.” He introduced an “exclusive story” by parliamentary reporter Joy Malbon, who reported that “senior government sources in various departments” insisted that Arar had provided information to the Syrians about al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups linked to Osama bin Laden, as well as to terror cells operating in Canada. Malbon added that Arar had also provided information about four other Canadians allegedly involved in terrorist activities.
The detained Canadian was now reportedly implicating other Canadians in plotting mayhem in Canada and was therefore useful to anti-terrorism authorities. The suggestion in Malbon’s report that this information had been derived from transcripts of interviews conducted by Syrian interrogators who routinely use torture should have raised alarm bells. If Malbon or Robertson had reservations about this information, their doubts did not prevent them from presenting their incendiary story.
Arar and his family had had enough. Kerry Pither, an Arar family spokes- person, told the Canadian Press on October 24 that Arar was outraged by anonymous sources who were falsely accusing him of being an “al-Qaeda rat.” “I think it’s a smear campaign chipping away at his credibility before Mr. Arar goes public with his story because they know they are implicated in what happened to him,” she said.
On November 4, 2003, Arar finally spoke. At a press conference in Ottawa he insisted, “I am not a terrorist.” Arar described himself as a hard-working, Syrian-born Canadian who had been kidnapped, beaten, tortured, and held in a grave where rats roamed free. The Ottawa Citizen published the full text of Arar’s statement, beginning on the front page, and the Globe also published a lengthy excerpt. Arar’s powerful declaration provoked a new round of editorials and opinion pieces calling for a public inquiry, but the Chrétien government rejected those calls, and the leaks kept flowing. There were no demands for journalists to name their sources.
The next anonymous leak had a curious twist. According to Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O’Neill, it was proffered to explain the motivation behind the earlier leaks and in defence of the actions of police and spies against brewing accusations that they had bungled the Arar file. In a front-page story on November 8, O’Neill relied on a leaked intelligence “dossier” provided to her by an unnamed security source to report that Arar had come under suspi-cion while the rcmp was investigating the activities of members of an alleged al-Qaeda logistical support group in Ottawa. One of the leaked documents, O’Neill added, contained minute details of Arar’s “supposed training” at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, including training in military tactics and small-arms use. O’Neill’s source was quoted as saying that Ottawa was opposed to a public inquiry because it would compromise ongoing probes into alleged terror plots.
