P-71 Canadian RCMP "To serve and protect".. Yea right... but just WHO are they serving and protecting.

Top Mountie under pressure to quit job OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's top Mountie, under heavy fire for botching the case of a man deported to
Syria by U.S. agents, came under immense pressure to resign on Tuesday after he admitted to misleading legislators about the affair.

The fate of Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli looked ever more precarious after Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was concerned by what the police chief had done.

Zaccardelli's woes stem from an official inquiry that found the RCMP had mistakenly told Washington that Canadian software engineer Maher Arar was an Islamic extremist.... U.S. agents arrested Arar in 2002 and sent him to Syria, where he says -- and the inquiry concurred -- that he was repeatedly tortured during the year he spent in Damascus jails. Arar was released in 2003 and is now suing Ottawa for damages.

Zaccardelli appeared before Parliament's public safety committee in September and told legislators he had first learned of the inaccurate information in 2002. But on Tuesday he said he had been mistaken and had in fact not become aware of the problem until the inquiry issued its report this year.

"I obviously did state certain things that were not accurate, and so I apologize for that," he told the committee.

Disbelieving legislators from both the governing Conservatives and opposition parties told Zaccardelli they did not think his explanation was credible.

"I'm a little bit incredulous that a police officer with 36 years' experience could make such a mistake ... I think you can appreciate why, on both sides of this committee, we find that a little bit hard to believe," said Conservative Laurie Hawn.

UPDATE '06 Dec 08 Mountie resignation not enough, Canada's Arar says