Unauthorized RCMP Taps

Much, in hindsight, might have been done differently.  Hindsight does that; it leads people to muse on how if they knew then what they knew later they might just have decided to proceed in a different vein.  Or perhaps not.  The direct aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, on the Pentagon, the downed plane in Pennsylvania, were authentic, debilitating shocks that the world of the West needed time to integrate into their life-experience.

Nothing had quite prepared anyone to contemplate such a series of shocking and utterly maliciously successful murderous raids outside the annals of shock-inducing comic books.  Society rushed to gird itself in hasty and sometimes hysterical preparation to shield themselves from further dreaded depredation.  The shock factor was such that its numbing effect lasted quite a long time. 

Security agencies were sent into a scramble of proactive prevention.

Not knowing exactly where to start, they started where it seemed most obvious.  Since the terrorists were all of Middle Eastern descent, visual identification of MidEast-appearing men of a certain age suggested they might conceivably represent as-yet-undetected threats.  And if any of them happened to be engaged in activities remotely perceived as possibly threatening, surveillance activities stepped up and so did harassment.

There was much at stake within society, after all. 

Protecting the public, government and its agencies and infrastructures was vital.  For the reality was that the enemy felt no compassion, no compunction over taking thousands of lives.  It was, rather, a matter for celebration, for mass murder made them martyrs for the cause, and the cause was a sacred one.  Could any cause be of more value, more elevated, than sacrificing one's self for a higher order, a Supreme Being?

In the search for evidence that would result in the containment of other threats it would be miraculous that no one would be harmed; instead the inevitable, not the miraculous occurred.  People who at first glance fit all the criteria and perhaps more in the minds of uneasy human intelligence, became targets and suffered consequences that might have been foreseen if anyone was looking for them, or really cared or understood.

Government lawyers are now defending government against a $180-million lawsuit filed by Abdullah Almalki, Muayyad Nureddin, and Ahmed El-Maati, all three of whom experienced an embittering, desperate situation when they were apprehended, jailed in Syria, and tortured.  The RCMP had erred, but it is understandable that they did, in monitoring what they took to be highly suspicious individuals engaged in highly suspicious activities.

The activities had another suspect, Maher Arar, also imprisoned after rendition from the United States en route back to Canada from a family trip.  He too ended up in a Syrian prison where he too experienced detention, interrogation, torture and the desolation of physical and mental anguish. 

"There was a rush after 9/11 to go after suspects whether rightly or wrongly.  The police had this tunnel vision - and it made them bypass the normal rules", said Maher Arar, accurately enough. 

One of those RCMP six wiretaps without warrants created the intercept that brought Arar himself into the investigative circle.  The three men contesting government consider themselves to have been "collateral damage" in the war on terror waged by Canada.  Quite so.

Years after these men experienced their misery, others of Middle East background have surfaced, through similar surveillance, attempting to commit acts of terror within Canada and elsewhere. 
Their detection and successful prosecution, leading to prison terms may not of course justify what had occurred to the wrongly suspected, but it does highlight how and why such events can and did occur.