Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen who was deported from New York to Syria, where he was imprisoned as a suspected terrorist, had his name added to a U.S. terror watch list based on information from Canada.

According to a U.S. State Department letter obtained by The Toronto Star, Arar was detained as a result of Canadian intelligence.

"While Mr. Arar's name was placed on a terrorist lookout list based on information received from Canada, the decision to remove Mr. Arar was based on our own assessment of the security threat posed by Mr. Arar," the letter, dated Dec. 17, 2003, said.

Arar was detained by U.S. officials as he travelled through a New York airport in September 2002. He was later sent, via Jordan, to Syria where he was allegedly held without charge for a year.

Canadian and American officials have previously conceded communicating about Arar's case, but stopped short of suggesting who had flagged him as a terror suspect.

The letter published in a report by The Star on Thursday, was sent by Department of State assistant secretary Paul Kelly to Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey in response to Markey's request for information from former Secretary of State Colin Powell -- explaining why the U.S. was not participating in the Canadian inquiry into Arar's case.

In his reply, Kelly told the senator that Arar's deportation was in America's "best interests," and that the U.S. had not sought Canadian consent to do so.

Arar has filed suit in the states, claiming that top officials within U.S. President George Bush's administration knew he would be tortured when he arrived in Damascus.

Earlier this week, the U.S. government filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, suggesting that failure to do so could endanger "intelligence, foreign policy and national security interests of the United States."

The public probe underway in Ottawa is charged with determining the role Canadian officials played in Arar's deportation.

At a press conference last month, Arar reminded Canadians that "very little has been public" since Liberal cabinet minister Anne McLellan ordered the inquiry more than a year ago.

One of the key questions he said he still wants answered is, "whether the security services in this country are contracting out interrogations to foreign agencies."