OTTAWA — The watchdog that oversees the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has received personal assurances from the head of the spy agency that it had no role in the detention of Maher Arar by U.S. authorities or his deportation to Syria.

CSIS director Ward Elcock recently told the Security Intelligence Review Committee the service was not involved in the Ottawa man's arrest or removal to his country of birth on suspicion of terrorism, said a spokeswoman for the review committee.

The denial could prompt renewed questions about the role played by the RCMP, Canada's other leading counter-terrorism agency, in supplying information to U.S. officials responsible for Arar's deportation.

Arar, a 33-year-old Canadian citizen born in Syria, was detained by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service on a stopover in New York in late September 2002.

The telecommunications engineer, travelling on a Canadian passport, was en route to Montreal from Tunis where he had been vacationing with his family.

Arar, who steadfastly denies involvement in terrorism, had apparently shown up on a U.S. watch list of suspected collaborators with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

In early October 2002, Arar was deported to Syria and spent most of the next year behind bars. Following his recent release and return to Canada, he described months of torture by his captors.

The case has attracted international attention, outraging civil libertarians who cite Arar's ordeal as emblematic of the Bush administration's disregard for due process in the war on terrorism.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said last week he had received assurances from Syria that Arar wouldn't be tortured if he was sent to that country.

Officials who questioned Arar in New York last year possessed a copy of an Ottawa rental agreement he had signed in 1997, and Canadian authorities have yet to explain how the private document ended up in U.S. hands.

Solicitor General Wayne Easter, the minister responsible for CSIS and the RCMP, has indicated Canada was among a number of countries that passed information about Arar to the U.S.

The Security Intelligence Review Committee, a civilian panel that reports to Parliament, broached the subject of Arar with Elcock this fall in light of the publicity about the case.

"The committee did have a chance to speak with the director of CSIS about it, and he personally reassured them that the service had no involvement in the detention or the deportation," said the spokeswoman, who declined to be named in keeping with committee policy.

She did not address the question of whether CSIS - even if it played no role in the arrest or deportation - had ever provided information to U.S. authorities about Arar.

CSIS spokeswoman Nicole Currier also denied involvement of the spy service in Arar's detention or deportation. She too declined to say whether CSIS had passed information about him to the Americans, but hinted the service had not done so.

"While we do share a certain amount of information with our counterparts internationally, it doesn't mean we share information on every single case that comes up," said Currier.

RCMP Sgt. Gilles Deziel said he could not discuss the matter, since the public complaints commission overseeing the Mounties has begun a formal investigation of the case.

The intelligence review committee performs a similar role in monitoring CSIS, but it has not received a complaint about the Arar case, the committee spokeswoman said.

Michael Edelson, Arar's lawyer, was not immediately available.