"Citizenship," according to a U.S. immigration official last week, "is in the eye of the beholder." Bizarre and alarming as this may seem, a 32-year old Syrian-born Canadian, has just learnt to his great dismay that this is no joke, that citizenship of foreigners visiting the United States means nothing to U.S. law enforcement authorities in the current security environment. This is especially the case when it comes to Arabs and Muslims.

Not even Canadian citizenship can save them. As Maher Arar, a telecommunications engineer of Syrian-origin in Ottawa, has found to his dismay this month, being a full-fledged Canadian citizen did not stop U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) from seizing him while transiting New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, and then deporting him – not to Canada, his country of domicile, where he has been living and working for the past 15 years, but to Syria, where he was born, but with which he has had little or no connection for more than a decade.

The fact that Arar is a long-time Canadian citizen, was travelling on a Canadian passport, and was on a flight back to Montreal after visiting his wife in Tunisia, carried no weight with INS officials.

They arrested him, interrogated him for several days, detained him for a couple more, and then put him on a plane to Syria despite his pleas that his home is in Canada. All this, without even by-your-leave from the Canadian authorities, either the Foreign Affairs Ministry or the Immigration Department.

Arar's story did not end with his deportation. After arriving in Syria, he has disappeared, and Canadian diplomats are still unable to locate him.

After several weeks, Syrians have confirmed that he has arrived there, but are not revealing his whereabouts there. His friends in Canada suspect that the man maybe under arrest and facing severe punishment as he had avoided compulsory military service by migrating to Canada as a teenager.

Naturally, Canadian officials are bristling. They feel, as it has happened several times in the recent past, Americans have disrespected the Canadian passport and mistreated a Canadian citizen. The government has lodged a strong protest with the U.S. State Department, demanding an explanation.

Said Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham last week: "A person travelling on a Canadian passport is a Canadian citizen and has a right to be treated as a Canadian citizen. I have registered our protest to the United States."

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, too, has weighed in on the issue, expressing his displeasure at the way Arar has been treated by the Americans.

He said that Ottawa is in contact with Washington, but Canada has not been told what is the nature of Arar's offence. "The Foreign Affairs Minister has lodged a political protest with the United States government," Chretien said. "But we cannot go and pick him up. He is not there any more."

Arar's wife in Tunisia has no idea. First, she was unaware that her husband had been arrested and deported, and only learned about what happened to him after several days of frantic enquiries when he failed to call her from Canada upon his scheduled return. Now, she does not know where he is in Syria.

"I am very, very worried," Monia Mazigh says. "I don't know where my husband is. This is very difficult to accept."

Americans have no explanation to offer either. If they know, they are not saying it. They are also not saying why he was deported to Syria and not to Canada.

Last week an INS spokesman would only say that he has been ordered not to comment on what prompted Arar's arrest and deportation. Paul Cellucci, U.S. Ambassador in Canada, refuses to elaborate. "All I can say is that the INS had good and sufficient reason for what they did, based on the current threat," Cellucci has told the Canadian media. "I think you may want to check with your local people on that."

But local foreign ministry officials insist they don't know. They say they have put the question of Arar's deportation to the United States and are awaiting an answer. "It is a very unusual case," Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron says.

"We are still looking for answers to the core question: Why a Canadian was deported by the U.S. without our knowledge?"

Alexa McDonough, leader of opposition New Democratic Party, is incensed. She is demanding that the government not let this pass lightly. She says that when a Canadian in the hands of U.S. justice disappears into a distant land, and U.S. officials are silent on the particulars, Ottawa must ask the hard questions.

Canada should use "the full force of its diplomatic corps to protest" what she says is clearly "illegal U.S. actions."

"If the United States has security concerns regarding a Canadian citizen transiting their country, it is incumbent upon them to notify Canadian authorities," she said. "Once again, the U.S. is flouting international law and acting as judge and jury."

So what is the mystery behind Arar's arrest, the rationale for his deportation to Syria when he is a citizen of Canada?

It looks like Arar is another victim of U.S. paranoia about Arabs and Muslims. Another instance of an Arab caught in a wrong place at a wrong time in the United States. For, according to the Canadian authorities, Arar has no criminal record in Canada. He is not a terrorist suspect and has not been accused of belonging to any banned organisation.

One explanation, according to his friends in Canada, is that he was once friendly with a man in the Syrian community in Ottawa who was investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as part of a post-September 11 intelligence follow-up.

Arar's name may have figured in the course of that investigation as the names of many other Canadians of Syrian origin had. But foreign affairs spokesman Doiron confirms that Canada has seen no evidence of any such connection.

Whether this past association sent up a red flag when Arar arrived in New York, they don't know. But it still does not explain why he was deported to Syria and not to Canada or Switzerland – from where his flight to New York had originated.

Why did INS deport him to Syria without conveying its suspicions to Canadian authorities? Why did U.S. officials – even now – refuse to explain the background of the case, since he was not subjected to any charges?

Canadians concede that Americans are well within their rights to control who enters their country and who passes through their airports, and even detain and question people they suspect to be security threats.

But Canadian citizens also deserve to be treated according to the law and conventions governing international travel.

After all, Canada is an American ally and a strategic partner in the war against terrorism. Canadians are their closest neighbours. They deserve some courtesy, a little more respect, perhaps. Or don't they?