OTTAWA—Canada 's top policeman looked set to keep his job on Wednesday, despite an official report that savaged the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's role in the U.S. deportation of Canadian citizen Maher Arar to a Syrian prison.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day voiced confidence in RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli despite a call by at least one newspaper for his replacement.
"We have confidence in the commissioner—not just the commissioner but all the men and women of the RCMP, right across the country," Day told CTV television.
An official inquiry found on Sept. 19 that the Mounties had wrongly identified Arar as an Islamic extremist and that this information prompted U.S. agents to deport him to Syria where the inquiry concluded he was tortured.
Arar, 36, a Canadian citizen who was born in Syria, was returning home from a holiday when he was arrested by U.S. officials during a stopover in New York. He spent a year in Damascus jails.
The Canadian government has brushed off questions about Zaccardelli's future, focusing instead on saying that it would implement the inquiry's recommendations, including tighter RCMP controls on giving out information to foreign countries.
