Violating Non Refoulement

The Justice Department’s ethics office is reviewing a decision in 2002 by department officials to send a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured. Syria has long been identified by the State Department as habitually using torture on prisoners. The movie Rendition was loosely based on this case.

Mr. Arar, a telecommunications engineer who had immigrated to Canada from his native Syria as a teenager, was detained in September 2002 as he tried to change planes at Kennedy International Airport. He had been flying back to Canada from Switzerland. Immigration officers found his name on a terrorist watch list. After several days of deliberation that involved some high-level administration officials, according to one former White House aide, Mr. Arar was sent to Jordan by immigration officers and turned over to Syrian intelligence. Mr. Arar, now in his mid-30s, was imprisoned for a year in Syria and beaten with a metal cable before being returned to Canada in 2003.

An exhaustive inquiry by a Canadian commission found that Canadian police and intelligence officials had provided inaccurate information to their American counterparts, erroneously linking Mr. Arar to Al Qaeda. Canadian officials apologized to Mr. Arar and awarded him about $10.3 million.