RCMP commissioner says he won't resign over Maher Arar affair

Zaccardelli also denied that the government gagged him right after O'Connor's report came out. He said he waited to explain himself before the committee.

In his testimony, he acknowledged the pain caused by RCMP errors outlined by a recent federal inquiry, which called them "smears" against Arar.

The Mountie chief said the force will act to ensure this never happens again.

The RCMP, he said, "will do whatever we can to see that no other Canadian citizen will ever suffer what happened to Mr. Arar and his family."

He also said flatly that there is no continuing investigation into Arar or his family.

Zaccardelli praised Arar and his wife, Monia Mazigh, for the dignity they maintained in their response to what he called their "nightmare."

He also said that he was not personally aware of the details of Arar's case until after the Syrian-born Canadian citizen was deported to Syria by American authorities.

"I personally became involved in the file after Mr. Arar was detained and sent to Syria," he told Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.

Before that, the commissioner said, he had only a faint knowledge of the case.

"I was aware that there was a serious investigation going on for some time," he said. He knew that Arar was "a person of interest" in that investigation.

Cotler asked if Zaccardelli should have known earlier. Zaccardelli said the Mounties conducted thousands of national security investigations following the 9-11 terror attacks. He said he couldn't have followed them all.

Justice Dennis O'Connor's inquiry report found that the Mounties sent unfair or inaccurate intelligence reports about Arar to the United States, falsely linking him to terrorists.

"I accept the recommendations of the report without exception," the commissioner said.

Arar was detained in New York in September 2002 and deported by the U.S. to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured into a false confession of a link to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.

Arar has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in the case.

The commissioner said the Mounties will learn from the Arar case and have already changed some management practices.

Zaccardelli - Zack to his friends - was named the 20th commissioner of the RCMP in September 2000. He joined the force in 1970, working his way through the ranks from regular cop to commercial and white-collar crime investigations.

He was commissioned in 1986 and took on larger and larger responsibilities until he was named deputy commissioner in 1998.

The Italian-born Zaccardelli moved to Canada with his family at the age of seven. He grew up in Montreal and is fluent in English, French and Italian.

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