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| Canada compensates torture victim Posted 26/1/07 TORONTO (AP) — The prime minister apologized Friday to a Syrian-born Canadian and announced a compensation package of $8.9 million for Ottawa's role in his deportation by U.S. authorities to Damascus, where he was tortured and imprisoned for nearly a year. ON DEADLINE: Premier apologizes to Arar Prime Minister Stephen Harper again called on the U.S. government to remove Maher Arar from its no-fly and terrorist watchlists. Arar was one of the best-known cases of rendition, a practice in which the U.S. government sends foreign terror suspects to third countries for interrogation. The engineer was detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2002 during a stopover on his way home to Canada from a vacation with his family in Tunisia. The United States turned him over to Syria, where he says he was tortured and kept in a dark cell for nearly a year. A Canadian inquiry last fall determined that Arar was indeed tortured, and it cleared him of any terrorist links or suspicions. Since then, Ottawa has been demanding a formal apology from Washington for its rendition, as well as clearing his name from its watchlists. |