A former US diplomat and retired Army colonel said she was detained at Ottawa airport on Thursday while en route to anti-war talks and a news conference with Canadian members of parliament (MPs) blasting wrongful detentions.
Retired Colonel Ann Wright, was scheduled to speak to media at 1pm alongside five opposition MPs outside parliament.
Later, she was to join the wife of Maher Arar, a Canadian who was wrongfully detained as a terror suspect and tortured, and the head of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group for a panel discussion on civil liberties breaches tied to post-Sept. 11 security.
"I've been detained and I've been banned from Canada for one year," Wright said. "Now, they're sending me back to the United States on a 5pm flight" because of a half-dozen US misdemeanor charges stemming from anti-war protests in Washington.
"It's ironic that I find myself in this situation," she commented, noting she was in town to spotlight the use of "watch lists and how people find themselves on these lists and are detained."
Wright, who was denied entry into Canada earlier this month, faces a US jury trial in December for disrupting top US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus' briefing to Congress last month, during which she demanded an end to the "Iraq occupation."
She was also fined for her part in anti-war protests outside the White House and on the steps of the US Congress.
New Democrat MP Alexa McDonough, who invited Wright, regretted that her guest underwent "three hours of interrogation" by customs officials, saying: "What happened today underscores how worrisome it is that we have these arbitrary kinds of decisions being made on the basis of FBI watch lists."
Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told reporters everyone entering Canada undergoes a security check and risks being barred from the country if they have a criminal record.
Meanwhile, Day pressed the US on Thursday to remove Arar from its no-flight list after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted Washington had mishandled his case.
Arar was arrested during a stopover in New York in 2002 and deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned for a year and, according to a Canadian inquiry into the affair, tortured.
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