Testimony by key Canadian diplomat from Damascus put off at Arar inquiry

[struggle4progress]

OTTAWA (CP) - The Maher Arar inquiry hit a snag when the appearance of a Canadian diplomat who had been scheduled to give key testimony was unexpectedly put off.

Leo Martel, consul at the Canadian embassy in Damascus, flew to Ottawa and was supposed to spend two days before the inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor.

But after an hour-long meeting with lawyers representing the federal government and Arar, commission counsel Paul Cavalluzzo said Martel's appearance was postponed until sometime in August.

Cavalluzzo initially cited personal and urgent circumstances but says it was not an illness or family emergency, but a business matter. <snip>

http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/news/shownews.jsp?content=n062033A

[nostalgicaboutmyfutr]

1. What is the Arar Inquiry?? EOM

[struggle4progress]

2. Canadian citizen Maher Arar was detained at JFK in NY in 2002,

and "rendered," not back home to Canada, but to Syria (via Jordan), where he was tortured for about a year. The Syrians finally decided he didn't know anything about terrorism and let him go.

Your tax dollars at work, building a new worldwide gulag, with the collusion of gutless US media, a gutless "opposition" party in Congress, and (in this case) gutless Canadian officials ...

Canada is actually holding hearings in the affair. Of course, the US Administration isn't cooperating, more evidence that we are currently ruled by a criminal elite ...