Maher Arar - The Syrian Revolution and Interrogation & Torture in Syrian Prison

In Bed with the Elephant

In November 2024 the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad was toppled in a revolution. The Assad family dynasty ruled over Syria with iron fists for over 50 years. Maher Arar knew the Assad regime all too well.

In late September 2002 just a year after the Al-Qaeda led September 11th attacks on the United States and in the midst of the so called War on Terror that followed 9/11, Maher Arar, a Syrian-born-McGill University educated engineer, was on his way home to Canada following a family trip to Tunisia. While on a stopover at New York’s JFK Airport, Arar was detained by US authorities and held for 12 days. He was then sent secretly on a private plane to Syria through Jordan. Maher Arar would spend a harrowing 10 months and ten days in some of Syria’s most notorious prisons where he was interrogated and tortured. Following a nationwide campaign led by his wife Monia Mazigh, Arar was released from Syrian detention and returned home to Ottawa in October 2003.

A few months later the Canadian government established a “Commission of Inquiry that examined his case.” Finally in January 2007 the Canadian government officially apologized to Maher Arar and paid him over $10 million dollars in compensation for its complicity in his detention.

Adrian Harewood spoke to Maher Arar in mid-December 2024 just weeks after the revolution that swept Syria. They discussed the political earthquake occurring in Syria, his memories of growing up during the Assad dictatorship, his time in the Syrian gulag and his hopes for the people of Syria.