Maher Arar was given an international human rights award Wednesday in Washington but he did not accept it in person because of fears that he might be detained again by the United States.

Academy Award-winning actress and activist Vanessa Redgrave presented the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award to Arar, a Syria-born Canadian citizen who was detained at a New York airport in 2002 and deported to Syria, where he was jailed for a year and tortured.

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born engineer, was detained while travelling back to his home in Ottawa from a family vacation in Tunisia in September 2002.
(CBC)

Arar appeared on a videotape with an acceptance speech.

Redgrave said Arar is "effectively banned" from the United States even though a Canadian federal inquiry found there was no evidence either Arar or his wife was an Islamic extremist with links to al-Qaeda.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, Redgrave said she had been shocked by the story of Arar's ordeal.

"Having studied the Canadian government's commission of inquiry, I can only say if my hair hadn't already gone white, it would have gone white overnight," she said.

Arar, who was born in Syria in 1970, was living in Ottawa when he was deported but he and his family have since moved to British Columbia.

"His fears are entirely founded … because his name is still on all those lists that compel border police or immigration officials or homeland security officials to pick him or his wife up," Redgrave told CBC Newsworld earlier on Wednesday.

An outspoken critic of the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq and U.S. President George W. Bush's war on terror, Redgrave said U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales didn't respond to a request from the Institute for Policy Studies asking that Arar be guaranteed safe entry and exit.

Marlys Edwardh, Arar's Canadian lawyer who attended the ceremony, said Arar had asked her to pass along a message: "When you go would you tell everyone while I can't come now, there will come a day and I will come."

Arar has 'suffered horribly': Redgrave

Redgrave, 69, has long been a social activist, campaigning against the Vietnam War and nuclear proliferation, and has served as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. She generated controversy in 1977 when she used her Oscar acceptance speech to promote the issue of Palestinian rights in Israel.

She praised Arar and his family, who she said have "suffered horribly" in the pursuit of justice.

Letelier-Moffitt awards will also be presented to the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which works to defend victims of human rights abuses and torture, and the Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign, which promotes the plight of survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

The awards were named after Chilean and American diplomats killed in a 1976 car bombing.