Public Safety Committee on Dec. 5th, 2006

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Well, this is an interesting question, Mr. Chairman, because if one reads the report, is aware of the report, one would see that Mr. Arar was a person of interest from the moment he came into this file. He maintains that designation in the investigation.

And again I go to Justice O'Connor. He was a person of interest before he was detained in New York. He continued to be a person of interest when he was in Syria. He continued to be a person of interest until Justice O'Connor issued his report that said he was not involved in any criminal activity or any terrorist activity.

Mr. Arar was always considered a person of interest, and Justice O'Connor states that. That's why he supports that the investigation by the RCMP was legitimate and we were entitled to pursue that investigation. He was always a person of interest, Mr. Ménard.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Commissioner, I don't think you've answered my question. Since we don't have a great deal of time, I'll settle for that answer. Not answering the question is an answer in and of itself, as I'm sure everyone understands.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

If I could add to that question, Mr. Ménard—

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

When you were last here, I asked you the following question: when did you become convinced that Mr. Arar was not connected in any way with a terrorist organization?

You told me, as you had told Mr. Cotler, that soon after Mr. Arar was arrested, deported to Syria and imprisoned, you learned the facts of this case and became convinced of his innocence.

Do you stand by that answer?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Monsieur Ménard, I want to clarify that matter. As I said, I am here to clarify any misinformation that I may have provided inadvertently.

I learned of Mr. Arar and the errors that were made related to him and the mislabelling of Mr. Arar once Justice O'Connor issued his report. And Justice O'Connor supports that, because he says that is when senior officers were not aware of those mistakes and that mislabelling.

I apologize if I, in any way, gave the wrong impression when I testified the first time, but that is what I want to clarify here today.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I understand. So then, you admit that your initial testimony before our committee may have left us with the wrong impression.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

I do. And that's why I wanted to clear up any misconceptions here today, Mr. Ménard.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I see. Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to do that the first time around...? As you can tell from my questions, I was convinced at the time that you knew Mr. Arar had no ties whatsoever to any terrorist organizations at the time of his detention in Syria.

Wen I asked you this question, Commissioner, you responded that immediately upon learning of Mr. Arar detention in Syria, you asked to see his file. You knew that an error by the RCMP had led to this chain of events. According to everyone, you left him to rot in a Syrian prison for almost a year. In the minds of most, but not all, Canadians, prior to the release of Justice O'Connor's report, Mr. Arar was linked to terrorists and you knew that was false. I said as much to you on September 28 last.

I then asked you this question: why is it that you did not find some way to intervene and advise the minister personally of this mistake?

In essence, why did you not do everything in your power to gain Mr. Arar's release and to restore his reputation prior to the report's release?

Would this not have been a good opportunity, Commissioner, if what you're telling us this morning is true, to correct our impression that you knew, while Mr. Arar was being detained in a Syrian prison, that he had no ties whatsoever to terrorists and yet was being detained in one of the worst prisons in the world?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chairman, again I go back to my previous answer. I tried to inform myself as best I could from reading the report. I wanted to appear as quickly as possible. I've indicated that I may not have totally represented the facts as they were, but Justice O'Connor, in his report, very clearly states that no senior officers were aware of these mistakes or this mislabelling—none of us were. We only found out after Justice O'Connor brought all of these things together through his exhaustive analysis.

I use the analogy of an audit, Mr. Chairman. An audit often goes into a large organization and takes disparate pieces of information and brings them together, and then we can see the picture. Mr. Arar was neither innocent nor guilty for us; he was a person of interest from the beginning right till the end of the report. Again, Justice O'Connor states that we had every right to consider him a person of interest throughout this ordeal, and that's what I've tried to clarify here today.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Answer me yes or no, Commissioner. When Mr. Arar was being held in a Syrian jail, did you know, firstly, that he had no links whatsoever to any terrorist organizations and secondly, that he had most likely been sent to one of the worst prisons in the world on the strength of erroneous information passed along by the RCMP to US authorities? Did you know this?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Again, Mr. Chairman, for us, Mr. Arar was always a person of interest. I did not learn about the mislabelling or the mistakes until after the conclusion of Justice O'Connor's report. Therefore, I could not have known that when he was detained in the United States or in Syria. I only learned of the mislabelling after the conclusion of the report.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

So then, why did you not clear up any misconception I may have had when I put the question to you last time around?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Chair, can I answer that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Yes, go ahead.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Again, I have stated that if I was incorrect or if I wasn't as precise as I should have been, I'm here to correct that mistake. I accept that I may have made a mistake in some of my answers, and I have looked forward to correcting that ever since I learned about it, when the media started to report some of this.

The clerk knows that my office tried to get hold of the clerk to come back. I wrote to the committee, Mr. Chairman, to get back here as soon as I could. I did everything I could once I realized that I might not have been as precise as possible in my testimony.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Comartin for seven minutes, please.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner, for being here.

I have to say to you that in the letter to us, you said something about where there was a misperception of your evidence when you came the first time, and you're repeating that today. I have practised law in the courts for 27 years, and I've read the transcript of your testimony. I've read it a number of times, Commissioner.

In response to four different members, including Mr. Cotler on the second occasion, you repeated over and over again that you knew, and the upper level of the RCMP knew, as early as when Mr. Arar was being detained in New York, that false and misleading accusations against him had been conveyed to the Americans. You repeated that, sir, at least five times in your testimony.

So will you agree with me that this isn't a misperception on the part of the people who asked those questions that day? It's not a misperception on the part of the people who listened to your testimony that day. This was a straight mistake on your part of conveying that information to us.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Comartin, I totally accept that I made a mistake, and again I can only attribute that to my rush to get before you, in front of the committee, and to my trying to absorb as much of the 1,200 pages of the report as I possibly could.

Clearly I made a transfer of the knowledge that I had acquired in 2006 to what I knew in 2002, which was incorrect. I accept that I made a mistake in this situation.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Then the information, which you gave us on these false accusations against Mr. Arar being communicated to your political masters—and I suppose I have to say mistresses as well—to the ministers in that period of time, was also incorrect, because there was no way you could have communicated this information if you didn't have it.

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

What I communicated to the minister through the briefings was the information, which we had, that he was a person of interest, that we had exchanged information, and so on.

This is why Minister Easter and others have testified that I didn't brief them about it. I couldn't have briefed them because I didn't know that information. I gave them all the information I had at the time.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Commissioner Zaccardelli, one of the troubling parts of your testimony is now a problem for me. In those five or six times—or maybe Mr. Holland is correct that you repeated the story eight times—you said that we, meaning the RCMP, had attempted, both while Mr. Arar was in custody in New York and while he was in custody in Syria, to correct the false information. You did. You repeated this a number of times. How could you have corrected false information when you didn't know there was false information?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Mr. Comartin, that's a very good question. What I knew was that the members at the time transmitted certain information to the Americans about what Mr. Arar's status was to the RCMP. We told the Americans four days before he was deported that we can't link him to al-Qaeda, we can't lay a criminal charge against him, and we can't detain him or prevent him from coming to Canada.

Now I realize that when the members were telling them, they weren't actually telling them to correct the record, because as I've learned since, when the members testified before O'Connor, they said that if the Americans had this wrong impression or false information, the testimony or information about Mr. Arar not being linked to al-Qaeda was given to them and should have corrected the record. That's what I was referring to about correcting the record.

If the false information had gone, which we didn't know had gone, the effect of telling the Americans that we can't link him to al-Qaeda, we can't arrest him, and we can't detain him should have been to correct the false information they may have had.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Commissioner, that just is not logical. It doesn't make sense. Why would your staff be correcting something that they didn't know...? Why would they be talking about correcting anything? Why would they simply not be saying he's a person of interest, and stop at that point? Where does the link with al-Qaeda, or his being a terrorist, an Islamic fundamentalist, or a fanatic...? Why would they be addressing that to the Americans unless they knew?

That, Mr. Commissioner, is really my problem. Is there more information that they communicated to the Americans that didn't come out in the O'Connor report and that you've not disclosed to us?

[Commr Giuliano Zaccardelli]

Absolutely not to my knowledge, Mr. Comartin. What took place is, the Americans had Mr. Arar in detention. They called the Canadians and said, what do you have on him? Can you detain him? Can you charge him? At that point the response was no, we don't have anything to link him to al-Qaeda, we can't charge him, we don't have any evidence to charge him, we can't detain him, and we can't prevent him from coming back in. That's all they passed on.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Sir, are you absolutely certain those questions came from the Americans, or was that us—the Canadian officials—being defensive?