I was on a watchlist once, but they’d only send me to Virginia
a Canadian was arrested at JFK while changing planes in 2002, shipped to Syria, and tortured for a year. it turns out, you know, he didn’t actually do anything. so three years later, he gets an official pardon and $10 million Canadian.
As he announced the settlement, Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a formal apology today to Mr. Arar and his family for their “terrible ordeal.”
He also renewed calls for the United States to remove Mr. Arar from its terrorist watch list.
“Canada fully understands and appreciates and shares the United States’ concerns with regard to security,” Mr. Harper said. “However, the Canadian government has every right to go to bat when it believes one of its citizens has been treated unfairly by another government.”
The case has strained the otherwise cordial relationship between Mr. Harper’s Conservative government and the Bush administration.
and also:
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, have told Canadian officials that Mr. Arar is still on the watch list because of independent information about him that law enforcement agencies in the United States have obtained.
But after reviewing that confidential file, however, Stockwell Day, Canada’s minister of public safety, said that it contains “nothing new” that justifies blocking Mr. Arar from entering the United States.
Earlier this week, David H. Wilkins, the United States ambassador to Canada, publicly rebuked Mr. Day. “It’s a little presumptuous for him to say who the United States can and cannot allow into our country,” Mr. Wilkins said at a news conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
okay.
first, I wish I could be the ambassador to Canada. it’d be like living in Minot, only with diplomatic status. and secondly, if I were at that press conference, I would have cut his fucking mic — literally, cut the cord — and threatened to strangle him with it if that cocksucker tried to derail the converation any farther.
