$10.5-million compensation can't buy him his life back

[FartinMowler]

OTTATWAT(CP) - Maher Arar could buy a lot of precious things with his $10.5-million compensation package - but not what he wants most.


"I wish I could buy my life back," Arar said after Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the money and formally apologized for his hellish ordeal in a Syrian prison. "That's my biggest wish." Arar said no amount of cash can compensate him and his family for the 10 months he spent in a tiny concrete cell, the agonizing torture sessions he endured, or the years he spent falsely labelled as a terror suspect.

However, he said the apology finally clears his name and restores his reputation after five arduous years - although the U.S. still refuses to remove his name from its security watch list

The Syrian-born Canadian citizen, who worked in Ottawa as a computer engineer, was detained by U.S. authorities in New York in 2002 and deported to Syria on the basis of unsubstantiated RCMP suspicions.

I should add this is total bullshit that my country is giving anyone any money when someone is suspected of being a terrorist.