Raise the Hammer
This week's Brabant papers include an interesting, if not unnerving, opinion piece on the Maher Arar fiasco.
I'll admit to my eyes bugging out as I read this piece. After all, it's easy for any of us to sit back in our comfortable living room chair and try to decide what is a "fair" amount of compensation for a year of unlawful imprisonment, torture, and to this day, a smeared reputation and name across the entire world.
I suspect this Brabant writer wouldn't have this opinion if he was a relative of Mr. Arar or a close friend.
I'd be quite interested to know this writer's opinion on the recent severance package presented to the outgoing CEO of Home Depot at $210 million.
Either they were beating this guy senseless in the lumber yard for years or something in our society is way out of whack when doing a crummy job as CEO is worth that kind of money, while a lifetime of pain is scorned over $10 million.
By bloodmoney (anonymous) | Posted February 02, 2007 at 23:02:46
Kindly allow me to be the first to compensate Mark Cripps for the 33 cents in tax money he has to cough up toward the settlement for Maher Arar. Bleagh.
By slayer (anonymous) | Posted February 05, 2007 at 16:01:28
if you read the entire opinion piece, and if you have read previous columns and editorials in Hamilton Community News (not Brabant) they have been strong advocates of compensation for Mr. Arar and also wrote editorials calling for the head of RCMP.
the better question to ask, and maybe you have an answer, is why doesn't Syria or the US pay part of the compensation for what happened to Mr. Arar? why did the US send Arar to Syria, and not back to Canada?
no doubt he deserved compensation... and i think the column clearly stated that.
it's easy to throw around money when it's not really coming out of your pocket
By slayer (anonymous) | Posted February 07, 2007 at 13:49:31
and for the record, I'd be interested to hear bloodmoney's 33 cents worth on these facts:
Canada did not imprison Arar for a year, nor send him to be imprisoned, and yet his compensation package is richer than David Milgaard's, who spent 23 years in a Canadian prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder by Canadian courts.
Arar's payout is almost 10 times the amount awarded to Donald Marshall, who served 11 years in a Canadian prison for a crime he was falsely convicted of in a Canadian court.
And let's not even compare Arar's lottery-like windfall with the relatively modest amounts assigned to survivors of Canada's abusive residential school system.
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