TORONTO - Maher Arar says as long as the media continues to cover stories about him, the Americans will continue to drag his name through the mud.
Arar chastized the media last night at a Toronto symposium put on by the Canadian Journalism Foundation for how it covered his ordeal.
He says reporters were too willing to rely on information from anonymous government sources and damaging leaks for which no one has been held accountable.
Arar compared an FBI agent's testimony at military commission hearings Guantanamo Bay to the damaging leaks.
The agent testified last week that a teenaged Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr, had seen Arar in an al-Qaida safehouse in Kabul.
Arar, who says he has never been to Afghanistan, says he has only ever seen Khadr on television.
Arar was on his way from Zurich to Montreal when he was detained in 2002 at New York's JFK Airport.
The Ottawa computer engineer was deported to Syria.
His 10-month ordeal in Syria became the subject of a commission of inquiry in Canada, which cleared him of any terrorist links and paid him a $10.5 million settlement.
But the U.S. won't clear his name and Arar is suing American authorities over his deportation.
