There are new claims about Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar and his alleged ties to terror.

The National Post quotes intelligence sources from Canada and the U.S. who claim to be "100 per cent sure" Arar trained with al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The report quotes unnamed, high-level Canadian and American officials who claim to have had access to an extensive secret intelligence file on Arar.

The officials allege Arar travelled to Pakistan in the early 1990's, then entered Afghanistan to train at the al Qaeda base known as the Khaldun camp.

Khaldun is the same camp where Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian refugee claimant who lived in Montreal, trained. He was convicted of planning a terrorist attack after crossing into the U.S. from Canada with a car packed with explosives.

Other graduates of the camp bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

Arar, 33, says he confessed to travelling to Afghanistan only after being tortured in Syria. He now insists he's never been to that country and that he's not a member of al Qaeda.

His family's spokesperson Kerry Pither reiterated those comments to the Post.

"He has never been to Afghanistan. He has never been anywhere near Afghanistan and it's ludicrous that once again officials from the Canadian government and intelligence services are refusing to name themselves and giving information on him," she told the paper.

"If they have something on Maher Arar, they should bring it out on the public. This is why we need a public inquiry."

But the Post quotes sources saying Prime Minister Paul Martin has been extensively briefed on Arar's activities abroad -- suggesting this is why the government backed off holding a full-scale public inquiry into his arrest and deportation to Syria by American authorities.

Arar was detained as a terror suspect at a New York airport in September 2002, while returning from a trip to Tunisia. The U.S. government then deported him to his native country of Syria where he spent 10 months in jail.

The report's sources say the RCMP had six officers at Montreal's Dorval Airport on the day Arar was due to return. But U.S. authorities arrested him in New York where he was changing planes.

The RCMP has said Arar was on an international terrorist watch list. The sources say that while the RCMP shared information on Arar with the U.S., they did not encourage the Americans to deport him to Syria.

They say the RCMP planned to monitor his activities upon his return to Canada and were furious that the U.S. acted without consultation.

The Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP has launched an inquiry into its involvement in the Maher Arar case, as has the watchdog for Canada's spy agency, CSIS.