In what the Canadian press is calling tactics resembling a police state, the RCMP, armed with a search warrant, spent 8 hours searching a reporter's home, trying to find the source of leaked information in the Maher Arar case that appeared in one of the reporter's articles on the case:

Police were seeking the source of an alleged information leak stemming from a Nov. 8 story O'Neill wrote on Arar, an Ottawa telecommunications engineer who became entangled in the war against terrorism. Arar, a Canadian citizen who hails from Syria, was deported to the country of his birth by U.S. authorities after being stopped in New York in 2002.

O'Neill's article cited "a security source" and a leaked document offering minute details of what Arar allegedly told Syrian military intelligence officials during his incarceration. Following his release last fall, Arar said he was tortured for months by Syrian authorities who pressed him about any links to the Al Qaeda terrorist network.

O'Neill reported that Arar told the Syrians he attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1993. Arar later insisted he only made a bogus confession under torture, and denied any involvement in terrorism. He has also called for a full public inquiry into what role Canadian police and intelligence officials might have played in his deportation. The federal government has so far rejected those calls.