"I can still hear the screams of people being tortured," confides Canadian citizen Maher Arar. Now a free man, he remains haunted by his recent experiences. His ordeal began two years ago when he was returning from holiday via JFK airport. He was arrested by FBI officials and accused of being a member of Al Qaeda. Three days later, despite begging for a lawyer and telling interrogators he'd be tortured if he was sent to Syria, he was transported to Damascus. "I was crying all the time. I couldn't believe what was happening," he recalls. Beatings with a 5 cm wide electric cable soon followed. After several days of torture, he confessed to attending Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. In reality, he had never even visited Afghanistan and needed his captors to tell him the name of the training camp he was meant to have attended. Ten months later, after a wave of media attention, he was released. He is now suing the US government and hopes that his case will raise important questions about the war on terror. "No one denies that we need more security. But we should do it in a way that protects the rights of every human being."