U.S. State Department on Arar

The U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins said today that the U.S. still considers Maher Arar a threat. Here’s some addition comments given by U.S.  State Department spokesman Sean McCormack who was asked today about the Arar case:

QUESTION: A question from Canada about the case of Maher Arar. He was the
Canadian that was deported from —

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: Anyways, since he was deported to Syria and tortured and two false
confessions of terrorist activity, a Canadian federal inquiry has cleared him
of any wrongdoing. Today the U.S. Ambassador to Canada confirmed that he's
still on the U.S. terror watch list. Why is that?

MR. MCCORMACK: I can't tell you the reasons for that. I don't know. The terror
watch list is managed here by the U.S. Government. There's a lot of different
inputs to it. I can tell you it's not a State Department input that has
resulted in his still being on the list. I'm happy to look further into the
question for you, but I can't tell you why. I don't know why.

QUESTION: I'm wondering if the U.S. Government has been in contact with the
Canadian Government about his case since the federal inquiry and shared the
information about his, you know, exoneration.

MR. MCCORMACK: I think there have been some exchanges. I don't have the details
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Yes, Mr. Gollust.

QUESTION: Can you tell us about Andrew Natsios\'s discussions today in Europe?
And given that time is slipping by in 2006, would he be talking about sort of
plan B sorts of things with NATO and the EU?

MR. MCCORMACK: I don\'t have any readout for you. He was supposed to be in
Brussels — supposed to have been in Brussels today or started his
conversations in Brussels today. I don\'t have a readout for you. He will be
back here in the States next week and I would expect the Secretary will want to
schedule a meeting with him to get a readout and his sense of where things
stand, what he was able to accomplish, what roadblocks are remaining, they are
still significant at this point, and what is the way forward. So I think those
are all conversations that we\'re going to be having during the coming week.

QUESTION: Could we suggest he speak to us?

MR. MCCORMACK: I certainly will.

QUESTION: And I have another question. I\'ve been asked to write something about
the Secretary\'s farewell lunch with Kofi Annan.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: Do you know anything about it?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, not much other than it\'s happening right now and it\'s a
private lunch with them and just a couple of aides. It\'s her way of bidding the
Secretary General farewell and wishing him the best in his future endeavors. As
she talked about recently, she will look back on her working relationship with
Secretary General Annan and remember many of the good things that we and she
were able to accomplish together with the Secretary General and the United
Nations. She referred specifically to the Global AIDS Fund, working to bring an
end to the war between Hezbollah and Israel, working on issues related to Sudan
and a variety of other issues.

Now, of course, there were differences. We all know what those differences are.
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