Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Giulliano Zaccardelli is sworn-in, before he testifies before the Commons public safety committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2006.
CREDIT: Canadian Press/Tom Hanson
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Giulliano Zaccardelli is sworn-in, before he testifies before the Commons public safety committee on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2006.
OTTAWA — RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli said today he may have made mistakes when he first testified about the Arar affair before the Commons public safety and national security committee in September, but refused to say he misled the committee.
“I believe some aspects of my prior testimony could have been more precise or clearly stated. A number of misconceptions have resulted,” Zaccardelli told MPs, who peppered him with questions for nearly two hours, during his second appearance before the committee.
Later in the House of Commons, where queries about Zaccardelli dominated the opening of question period, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was “surprised” by Zacardelli’s change of story and that government “will study his testimony.”
However, he resisted demands to fire the commissioner immediately. “You can’t, in the government, just go out and fire people without due process,” Harper said.
Mahar Arar, a Canadian citizen, was arrested and deported by U.S. authorities in October 2002 and held in Syria until October 2003.
Justice Dennis O’Connor conducted an inquiry on the case and concluded in his report this fall that misinformation from the RCMP very likely led to Arar’s arrest in the United States and his deportation.
When Zaccardelli appeared before the committee on Sept. 28, he said he first learned of RCMP mistakes some time after Arar was imprisoned and that he informed senior government officials about the problems. Zaccardelli testified that he knew the RCMP were trying to correct the record with their U.S. counterparts while Arar was being detained in Syria.
But at a speech Monday and again at the committee meeting this morning, Zaccardelli told a different version of events.
He told MPs that he knew Arar was a “person of interest,” but did not learn that the RCMP had passed inaccurate information to U.S. authorities until much later, when he read O’Connor’s report.
Zaccardelli said today that his senior officers were not aware that Arar had been mislabeled or that false information had been passed on to U.S. authorities and, therefore, there’s no way he could have known because his senior officers are responsible for briefing him on such matters. Throughout his testimony, Zaccardelli repeated that he only learned the full scope of how the RCMP mishandled the Arar case when he read the inquiry report.
Zaccardelli explained the confusion about his earlier testimony by saying he was rushed to appear before the committee and inaccuracies may have arisen from his answers because he did not have sufficient time to prepare for his appearance.
He wanted to appear again before the committee today to “set the record straight,” Zaccardelli said.
He again shrugged off calls for his resignation, saying he never purposely withheld information or misrepresented facts.
“If I had been guilty of such actions, no one would have to ask for my resignation Mr. chairman. The facts of the matter are, however, that due to circumstances I have described we were unaware of some important information until the completion of Justice O’Connor’s inquiry this year. My colleagues and I deeply regret that mistakes were made but it is important to recognize that at all times we acted in good faith,” Zaccardelli said.
Also in question period, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day denied accusations by Liberal MP Mark Holland that he interfered with the RCMP’s response to Justice Dennis O’Connor’s report.
Day, who in September said he had full confidence in Zaccardelli when he first testified before a parliamentary committee, was rather guarded in his support for the commissioner today.
“We want to study our response and we will come to our decision in a professional way,” Day told the House of Commons.
The minister would not answer whether Zaccardelli’s resignation had been asked for, saying only that the government is reviewing the facts, and did not answer a direct question about whether or not he still had confidence in Zaccardelli.
CanWest News Service
© CanWest News Service 2006
- Still further reading -
Arar's case blog at http://www.maherarar.ca/
Upon following the Arar's case, it seems apparent that there hasn't been much trace of justice to protect the human right of innocent personnel not only in North Korea but also both Canada and the US. Now the question is, would there be justice to recognize the injustice.
