Hope and Despair

by Monia Mazigh

  I tried to rest, to forget, and to hope that things would get better, but my head was throbbing. I longed to get away, far away, to escape this tension that had hold of me. I got up and went to look at the children; they were both sleeping peacefully in their little beds. For a few minutes I watched them breathing gently and it calmed me. Then I went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water.

  — 7 —

  INTEREST GROWS

  once an orderly, rather intellectual person,

  I became a human rights activist …

  SEPTEMBER 2, 2003. September began on a positive note. In an oped article published in the Globe and Mail, Irwin Cotler, the lawyer and professor of law who had volunteered to defend Maher, had pinpointed six measures that Canada must adopt in order to obtain his release (“Six Steps to Freedom: What Canada must do to secure justice for Maher Arar,” Irwin Cotler, Globe and Mail, September 2, 2003). Cotler’s excellent analysis was written with great intellectual discipline; the fact that he was also a Liberal MP gave it even more weight.

  I was delighted, especially since I had been wondering what a lawyer could hope to accomplish when his client, a victim of injustice, was being held endlessly in prison and didn’t even know the charges against him. Now, however, Cotler had given me the arguments I needed to make the Canadian government get involved. So far, I had run up against a stone wall: the civil trial that Minister Bill Graham and the officials at Foreign Affairs kept talking about seemed to be going nowhere, which only magnified the very real danger that Maher would be held indefinitely in that secretive country, Syria.

  SEPTEMBER 3, 2003. A month earlier, I’d learned that Gar Pardy, head of Consular Affairs at Foreign Affairs, would soon be retiring – but I had no idea of the reasons for his unexpected (and to me, rather sudden) departure. Could it have been a consequence of his email of April 12, in which he described the Canadian government’s ambiguous position on Arar’s case, giving me a “lead” that I would later use to put the government in an awkward position? Whatever my conjecture, it meant that I would now have to learn to work with his replacement, Conrad Sigurdson. Myra Pastyr-Lupul, Mr. Pardy’s assistant, was still on the job, which meant that at least I could look forward to a certain continuity in my relations with the department. Even though I’d often been annoyed with Mr. Pardy, I was genuinely sad to see him go. I’d always hoped that he could carry through with his work and see the promise he’d repeatedly made me – that Maher would be back one day – come true.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Pardy’s departure only deepened my feelings of uncertainty. So when I called his replacement, Mr. Sigurdson, I hardly knew what to expect. Over the phone his voice sounded timid, almost inaudible. What a contrast with Gar Pardy, who knew how to fill every minute of a conversation, and who had the gift, each time we spoke, of boosting my confidence. This time, Myra joined the discussion. She who had always taken a back seat, letting Mr. Pardy occupy the foreground, was now helping Mr. Sigurdson and spoke of the case with confidence.

  Not only was I thrown off by the new situation, but the news I was about to hear disturbed me even more: Maher was not going to be brought before a civil court, Myra informed me, but before the Supreme State Security Court. Supreme, security, state: the three words echoed in my head. I thought back to my teenage years in Tunisia, when I’d heard of the State Security courts there, a parallel judicial system whose primary function was to muzzle the government’s Islamic opponents. One didn’t trifle with “state security” in Tunisia. Nor in Syria, for that matter. People would tremble when they heard the words, words that were whispered furtively, almost superstitiously, as if to keep such a misfortune as tangling with “state security” from befalling them. In those courts, there was no appeal against the verdict, which all too often led to a life sentence or the death penalty.

  “What do you know about that court?’ I asked Mr. Sigurdson, to verify my suspicions.

  “We know that the procedures are summary, and that the sentence cannot be appealed,” he answered as though he’d expected the question.

  “But weren’t the Syrians talking about a civil court?”

  “Yes, they were. We’ve just heard the news.”

  But that wasn’t all. Mr. Sigurdson also told me that Maher was now being held in Sednaya Military Prison, which Saleem el-Hassan of the Syrian Human Rights Committee had also mentioned in his report. But Mr. Sigurdson was not yet aware of the charges, nor the trial date. We were back at square one, but this time the spectre of the Supreme Court seemed to be sending a signal that things had taken a new, ominous turn.

  “Do you know if the ambassador will be able to attend the trial?”

  There was a moment of silence, then Myra spoke up:

  “The ambassador, Franco Pillarella, will be leaving on September 12. His replacement will be Brian Davis. According to our best information, he should be arriving in Syria soon.”

  Speechless with consternation, I listened without a word. What more could I say? I waited for the conversation to run its course and hung up. I needed to be alone to think things through.

  Just what was going on at Foreign Affairs? Gar Pardy, the head of Consular Affairs, was retiring while Maher’s case remained unsettled. Canada’s ambassador to Syria was leaving on the eve of a major trial, just as the Foreign Affairs minister, Bill Graham, was boasting to journalists in Toronto that Maher had the right to be tried by a civil court. Now Conrad Sigurdson was telling me that my husband was to be tried by the Supreme State Security Court.

  In my dismay, I’d forgotten Irwin Cotler’s article and his six measures. I sat down at my computer and did a short search, hoping to learn more about this Supreme Court. I wanted to find out for myself if my fears were justified. I found my answer in the U.S. State Department’s 2002 Country Report for Syria: “[The Court] did not observe constitutional provisions safeguarding defendants’ rights.” The report also stated that defendants were not allowed to attend preliminary hearings or the investigative phase of the process, trials were generally closed to the public, defence lawyers were forced to submit written rather than oral pleas, the state’s case was based on confessions, and defendants could not argue in court that their confessions had been coerced.*

  The more I read, the more sick at heart I felt, seeing Maher trapped in a dreadful labyrinth from which he couldn’t escape. My own sense of helplessness deepened; it was as if I were sinking down into a bottomless pit. I’d had some sorrows in my life, but all those had faded away, leaving only pangs in my heart. But the wound that Maher’s imprisonment had inflicted on me gaped open, and what I was hearing only tore it wider.

  “Mama, when are we going to the shopping centre? I need a new school bag. And this year, I want a backpack.”

  Barâa, who would be starting grade two in a few days, was insisting that we go shopping for school supplies. Gone was the little girl intimidated by the teacher and the other children; now she was a big girl waiting impatiently for the first day of school to see all her old friends and meet her new teacher. Houd, still too young at nineteen months to go to school, didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “All right,” I agreed. “Let’s go right now.”

  I was happy to get out of the apartment and get my mind on small, unchallenging things; Barâa was jumping for joy. In minutes we were ready to go. Houd had retrieved his stroller from the closet, brought it to the door, and was sitting in it patiently.

  It was a fine day, and the short walk to the shopping centre gave me a welcome chance to bask in the warmth of the sun’s rays. Not surprisingly, the shops were thronged with parents and children looking for clothing, shoes, backpacks, pens, coloured pencils, and whatever else you could think of. Houd swung his little legs up and down in his stroller as he loved to do and looked curiously at the people around him. I let Barâa drag me from one shop to another. Suddenly, it was love at first sight between Barâa and a denim skirt in a window.

  “I can keep my old school bag, it’s st
ill good, but I really adore that skirt. I’ve just got to have it!”

  Naturally, I bought it, along with a few other items, and we returned home. Our little outing had brought me back to earth; I felt better. So when the children insisted on going out to play again, I went along gladly. The park was crawling with kids; it seemed to be welcoming us with open arms.

  Imagine my surprise when I learned that the request I had made in July to meet the U.S. ambassador to Canada had been accepted! Except that we would not be speaking with Ambassador Paul Cellucci himself, as we’d hoped, but with his political counsellor, Robert Flora. This was the first time the U.S. Embassy had agreed to discuss Maher. My colleagues and I decided that Alex Neve of Amnesty International, Riad Saloojee of CAIR-CAN, Flora MacDonald, a former minister of Foreign Affairs and now a representative of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, and I would make up the delegation. I didn’t know Ms. MacDonald personally, but we had spoken by telephone and I had a great deal of respect for her experience as a politician and her dedication to many humanitarian causes. I was delighted that she’d agreed to lend us her support.

  I was thinking about what I would say at the meeting when the phone rang. It was Alex. Usually he was bright and cheerful, but that morning he seemed hesitant, embarrassed.

  “What is it?” I asked him.

  His answer came slowly: “It’s about the meeting at the U.S. Embassy …”

  I was expecting the worst. The Americans were going to let us drop … But he went on: “Well, Robert Flora, who runs the political section of the embassy, whom I know pretty well – we’ve worked together on a number of cases – he doesn’t want you to be part of the delegation.”

  Alex was upset; he wondered if we shouldn’t cancel the meeting. As far as I was concerned, it had never occurred to me that a meeting could take place without me; it seemed preposterous that I couldn’t be a part of a delegation that was visiting the embassy to talk about my husband. But I was comforted to know that I was the only one being excluded.

  “We’ve got to meet the people from the embassy,” I told Alex without missing a beat. “It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.”

  Yes, I wanted the meeting to take place, with or without me. I wanted the Americans to rectify their error and help us bring Maher back to Canada. Even if it was unlikely that my wish would come true, I wanted to try. With a note of relief, Alex told me: “I’ll call the embassy and let them know that we’ll be there as planned, Flora, Riad, and I.”

  A question popped into my head: “What about the American diplomatic official? Did he say why he didn’t want me in the delegation?”

  Embarrassed again, Alex replied, “He told me he didn’t want the meeting to be too emotional … at least that’s what I thought I heard.”

  I was startled by the official’s answer. I’d never cried in public. It was ironic! The suffering I might be expected to feel as the wife of a man who was in prison and subjected to torture was turning out to be a handicap, undermining my efforts.

  Ever since I’d learned that Maher was to be tried by the Syrian Supreme State Security Court, I had been doing everything I could to alert the people around me. Kerry Pither and I wanted to gather together as much information as we could about the court and its injustices, and share what we learned with the Canadian public. We were convinced that our first task was to warn people in Canada – citizens and politicians alike – about the perils Maher was facing in Syria. Amnesty International put its information centre at our disposal. We quickly learned that several Syrian dissidents or opposition politicians had been tried by the court. We had strong evidence of the irregularities that had taken place. But what really frustrated me was that no one knew what Maher was accused of. Even Haythem al-Maleh, the Syrian lawyer I’d chosen on the recommendation of several human rights organizations, could not learn the answer.

  SEPTEMBER 9, 2003. I called Mr. al-Maleh to find out if there was any news. The telephone connection was bad; I was afraid we’d be cut off at any moment.

  “Have you been able to meet Maher?” I asked.

  “No,” he said with a note of sadness and resignation in his voice. “I keep insisting on meeting with him and seeing his file, but they refuse. They say I cannot speak to him before the trial begins, and that the file is not yet completed.”

  There was a moment of silence, then I ventured: “Is that normal?”

  I thought I heard faint laughter at the other end of the line, then Mr. al-Maleh said, “I don’t know any more what’s normal and what isn’t …”

  I thanked him for his efforts and promised to keep him up to date on what we were doing.

  It occurred to me that the Syrians might be bluffing. Their refusal to make any specific accusations might be a positive sign; it might mean that they had nothing on Maher. Maybe it was their way of washing their hands of his case. Or perhaps they were trying to whip up public opinion by showing that Maher really was a dangerous terrorist. I wanted to believe that it was all a put-on, that they were looking for a way to release him. But I couldn’t count on it, knowing well Syria’s reputation for ignoring political pressure. Ultimately, I had to choose between trusting my intuition and relying on the facts. Once again, I found myself torn between hope and fear, between light and darkness.

  A day or two later, I was waiting in line at the post office when I noticed a stack of blue pamphlets featuring the Canadian passport. I picked one up for a closer look. On the first page were the words: “The Canadian passport: a trusted document.” When my husband travelled from Tunisia to Montreal with his Canadian passport, with stopovers in Switzerland and the United States to change planes, there had been no doubt in his mind that his Canadian passport was indeed a trusted document. Now, a year after his arrest in the United States and his deportation to Syria, I can only presume that he no longer thinks so.

  One thing is certain: the U.S. authorities didn’t consider the Canadian passport to be a trusted document when they removed my husband to Syria, where he was born, rather than to Canada, where he has lived since age seventeen.

  Who is going to defend Maher Arar now? I wondered. Three countries owed us an account of what they had done – or had not done: the United States, Syria, and Canada. The American authorities, the very people responsible for his plight, with not the slightest consideration for his basic rights, had so far refused to co-operate, claiming they deported him with the blessing of Canadian police authorities. That left us with Syria and Canada.

  In Syria, my husband had received no medical care and had not been allowed to speak with any member of his family. He was accused of belonging to the al-Qaeda network, a crime for which they wanted to bring him before a military tribunal. For months, the consular visits had been suspended and no Canadian official had been allowed to see him. It was as if he had simply vanished. And now, all of a sudden, they wanted to try him before the Supreme State Security Court – truly terrifying news. There would never be justice for Maher in Syria, I was convinced of it.

  My only hope of bringing my husband back, of bringing Barâa and Houd’s father back to them, was the Canadian government. Tragically, a year after the start of our ordeal, even that hope, once so tenacious, had all but vanished.

  Maher’s six-year-old daughter would cry herself to sleep, thinking of the father she had not seen for twelve months, an eternity for her. School would be starting once more, but as with last year, her father would not be with us to share her enthusiasm and delight.

  Time and again she asked, “When will Baba come back?”

  I didn’t know what to answer. The Canadian passport – “trusted document” that it is – had not protected my husband.

  SEPTEMBER 11, 2003. I made my way to the offices of the Inter national Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. This was where our little delegation was to gather before making its way to the meeting at the U.S. Embassy. Flora MacDonald was already there; it was my first encounter with her. She welcomed me cordiall
y and asked me several questions with a view to sharpening her grasp of Maher’s case. As Canada’s then-minister of External Affairs (as it was called at the time) during the 1979–80 hostage crisis in Tehran, she had a fascinating negotiating argument: since the Canadian Embassy in Iran had helped several members of the U.S. Embassy staff to flee, she would suggest to “our American friends” that they do the same, by helping Maher Arar to get out of Syria. To me, the idea was a brilliant one.

  When Alex, Riad, and Kerry arrived, the five of us went off on foot toward the U.S. Embassy, a fifteen-minute walk. It was a hot day and I’d made the mistake of wearing a dark jacket; it felt as though I was crossing the desert – which, in a different sense, I’d been doing for the last year. A handful of journalists who’d got wind of the meeting were waiting for us in front of the embassy gates. Alex, Flora MacDonald, and Riad went in; I watched as they spoke to a security guard, then entered the building. Meanwhile, Kerry and I waited outside. I was still fuming at being shut out of the meeting, but I had great confidence in our delegation. Little by little the journalists – who were just as impatient as we were to find out what the Americans had to say about Maher – gathered around us; I didn’t even notice the time go by.

  Then I caught sight of Flora MacDonald leaving the embassy, followed by Riad and Alex. The journalists rushed off to meet them, each trying to pry from them a statement about the meeting. I waited off to the side for the little crowd to disperse, and Flora quickly came over to inform me of the results of the discussion: the United States was not prepared to so much as lift a finger. Its position was that, in diplomatic terms, it was a matter between Canada and Syria; there was no way they could intervene. I had known that our initiative was unlikely to succeed, so I felt no severe letdown. Still, it was hard news to swallow.