Robert Fife Please Stand Up

In 2003, Robert Fife wrote:

Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials are "100% sure" that a Syrian-born Canadian who was imprisoned for a year in Damascus trained at the same al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan as Ahmed Ressam, the former Montrealer convicted of planning a terrorist attack.
American officials have long maintained that Maher Arar had undergone training in Afghan- istan, but this is the first time they have identified the site as the Khaldun camp. Canadian officials have never made any claim before about Mr. Arar's alleged activities in Afghanistan.

and

High-level sources in Canada and the United States who have had access to an extensive secret intelligence file on Mr. Arar say the 33-year-old Ottawa software engineer travelled to Pakistan in the early 1990s and then entered Afghanistan to train at the Khaldun camp.

Osama bin Laden often visited the camp in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan where Western recruits were allegedly schooled in the use of explosives and suicide attacks.

"This guy is not a virgin," said a senior Canadian intelligence source, speaking on background. "There is more than meets the eye here." Officials link Arar to Qaeda camp National Post 12-30-2003

Now aside from the fact that this was 100% bullshit, none of these "senior sources" have ever been exposed. It is easy, too frickin easy, to hide behind the old "I can't reveal a source" dodge. Any "source" that would lie to a reporter in a way that damages the reputation of an innocent man, deserves to be exposed and held to the ridicule he deserves. It's been 4 years, Mr. Fife. Mr. Arar still needs to know the truth. You know who smeared him. Please do the right thing and tell.

Update: I hope Canadian journalists are smarter than this. I don't hold out much hope, however.

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