On Thursday, justice department officials met with Leahy and Arlen Specter:
WASHINGTON: The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday the Justice Department has not convinced him that U.S. officials acted properly in deporting a Syrian-born Canadian to Syria rather than to his home in Canada.
Maher Arar was detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2002 as he arrived to change planes heading home from a vacation. After a week's detention, Arar was deported by private jet to Syria, where he — and a Canadian commission that investigated his case — said he was tortured.
[...]
"I still have concerns," the Judiciary chairman, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, told reporters after an hour and 40 minutes in a private briefing by Justice Department officials.
Chief among them, Leahy said, is why U.S. officials deported Arar thousands of miles (kilomters) to Syria, where he could have been expected to be tortured, rather than the short distance to Canada.
The committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter, also at the briefing, said, "This matter is under very intensive congressional oversight."
The senators said they could not discuss the classified material they had seen and declined even to say whether they agree with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that Arar's name should remain on the U.S. terrorist watch list.
Leahy also wants the GAO (Government Accountability Office) to look into why Arar is still on the no-fly list.
This is far from being over.
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