U.S. Envoy Slams Canada Over Watch List

EDMONTON, Alberta -- Canada should relent in its effort to have a Canadian man removed from an American security watch list who said he was tortured in Syria, the U.S. ambassador said Wednesday.

The comments by Ambassador David Wilkins follow a push by Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to have Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, taken off the watch list.

"It's a little presumptuous of him to say who the United States can and cannot allow into our country," Wilkins told a news conference.

Arar's is one of the best known cases of extraordinary rendition, a practice in which the U.S. government sends foreign terror suspects to third countries for interrogation.

He was exonerated of all terrorism links last fall by a Canadian inquiry that concluded the Royal Canadian Mounted Police gave U.S. authorities misleading information before Arar was deported to Syria by the U.S. while in transit at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2002.

Arar says he was held and tortured for more than a year in a Syrian jail.

After his release, Syria did not charge him with any crime and Arar made detailed allegations about torture that Canadian authorities determined were credible.

In September, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called on the United States to "come clean with its version of events" and demanded the White House apologize for Arar's rendition.

Ottawa has demanded a formal apology from Washington for Arar's rendition, as well as clearing his name from its watch lists. But Wilkins dismissed the requests.

"Canadian officials would rightly never tolerate any American official dictating to them who they may or may not allow into their country," he said.

Wilkins said three U.S. agencies did a full review of Arar and found their own reasons to keep him on the U.S. watch list.

"We respect Canadian officials and their decisions on who should be on their watch list, we would ask them to show us the same respect," he said.

Day said Tuesday that he has seen the information supplied by Washington and found nothing new to suggest Arar is a safety risk.