inputs: hypothesis: Al Qaeda is connected to the United States. premise: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police bungled the case of Maher Arar leading to an innocent man being tortured in Syria following his deportation from the United States, according to the findings of the federal inquiry into the affair. Justice Dennis O'Connor's report, released yesterday, reveals that the RCMP erroneously told the United States that Arar was linked to Al Qaeda and wrongly described him as an "Islamic extremist individual". "The potential consequences of labelling someone an Islamic extremist in post-9/11 are enormous" wrote O'Connor. Based on information received from the RCMP, Arar was detained on September 16, 2002, during a stopover at JFK Airport in New York City. After being held in the US for two weeks he was deported to Syria under the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" and was detained in a Damascus prison for a year without charges and tortured before being returned to Canada.