THE SUPER-EFFICIENT CANADIAN POLICE AGAIN

Canadian police wrongly identified an Ottawa software engineer as an Islamic extremist, prompting US agents to deport him to Syria, where he was tortured, an official inquiry found yesterday. The Canadian Government commission exonerated computer engineer Maher Arar of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the US for his deportation four years ago to Damascus. The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year probe, one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the US's "extraordinary rendition" program, which removes suspects to secret jails in foreign countries for interrogation.

In this case, Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to US agents about Mr Arar, a Muslim-Canadian citizen, which led US authorities to deport him to Syria, the commission said. After his release in 2003, the Syrian-born Mr Arar made detailed allegations about extensive interrogation, beatings and whippings with electrical cable in Syrian prison cells. Mr Arar was travelling on a Canadian passport when he was detained at a New York airport in September 2002 during a stopover on his way home to Canada from a holiday in Tunisia. He claimed he was a victim of extraordinary rendition - the transfer of foreign terror suspects to third countries without court approval. Mr Arar said US authorities sent him to Syria for interrogation on suspicion of being a member of al-Qaeda, an allegation he denied.

Canada's federal Government established an inquiry in 2004 to determine the role Canadian officials played in the case of Mr Arar, who has been cleared of any terrorist connections. Judge Dennis O'Connor released the report on Mr Arar, which concluded that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RMCP) passed misleading, inaccurate and unfair information to US authorities that "very likely" led to their decision to send Mr Arar to Syria, but found no evidence that Canadian officials participated in or agreed to the decision. "It's quite clear that the RMCP sent inaccurate information to US officials," Mr Arar said. "I would not have even been sent to Syria had this information not been given to them."

Justice O'Connor absolved Mr Arar of all suspicion of terrorist activity and urged the federal Government to offer financial compensation for his suffering. He concluded Mr Arar had been tortured. "I have waited a long time to have my name cleared. I was tortured and lost a year of my life. I will never be the same," Mr Arar said. "The United States must take responsibility for what it did to me and must stop destroying more innocent lives with its unlawful actions."

Justice O'Connor recommended that information never be provided to a foreign country when there is a credible risk that it will cause or contribute to the use of torture. Justice O'Connor sifted through thousands of pages of documents and sat through testimony from more than 40 witnesses. He delivered two versions of his report to the Government: one classified, the other public.

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