The irony of the early part of the investigation was that Almalki co-operated completely with the authorities but it certainly earned him no brownie points. If he had something to hide you would think authorities would wonder at his openness not even requiring lawyers. The whoe story is disgusting as are those of the other two involved in the Iacobucci inquiry. The lawyer's scepticism about the inquiry I share, especially since the Justice dept. claims the three will be unable to clear their names. Even if the inquiry does find that authorities did wrong the inquiry has no power to rectify the situation just to make loud noises and recommendations that the govt. will probably applaud and then leave in limbo. No one will be accountable as no one has been held accountable in the Arar case. The media should be hammering this home. If no one is punished and some are in effect rewarded why should the public expect positive change?
'In Syria, interrogation and torture go hand-in-hand'
Written by Simon Kupi
Friday, 13 April 2007
First, cars followed his family around town. Then customs tape wound its way around his business shipments. Old credit card statements he never asked for showed up in his mail. When he traveled, there were random luggage checks.
But when Abdullah Almalki left Ottawa to visit his sick grandmother in Syria in May 2002, being detained there was the last thing he expected.
Syrian officials imprisoned the Syrian-born Canadian, blindfolded and interrogated him for hours about his alleged links to al-Qaeda.
When he denied those claims, he was lashed hundreds of times with a thick, twisted wire cable, folded into a tire and brutally beaten. He was held in a dirty, closet-sized cell, and spent the next two years thousands of miles from his family in Canada.
And Almalki, who received his engineering degree at Carleton University, says the Canadian government knew all about his conditions.
More than that, he says, they continued to supply his torturers with facts to interrogate with. And those facts, he says, could have only been gathered through CSIS, which he says had been spying on him and his family in Canada.
“Having a camera installed on the street in front of our house. Someone going to check what kind of groceries that we were buying. If we were going to a bank, they would follow us,” he says.
“You see these things in movies. You never think they actually do happen.”
* * *
Almalki’s story is an unfamiliar one to most Canadians.
He was acquainted with and later imprisoned with Maher Arar, another Canadian who was accused of being linked to al-Qaeda.
The Arar commission mentioned Almalki as the target of the RCMP’s Project A-O Canada, an anti-terrorism investigation.
Yet Almalki chose to remain publicly silent about his experiences in the year following his 2004 release.
Then, he says, he began to speak out, partly from a desire to learn what role, if any, the government had in his detention.
During the Arar commission’s inquiry, the head of the A-O Canada investigation, Michel Cabana, said the RCMP never asked Syrian officials to keep Almalki incarcerated.
Cabana also testified he had “no direct knowledge” of human rights abuses by Syrian investigators, but was aware that “Syrian authorities might not follow the same procedures, and treat their incarcerated individuals the same way as we do here in Canada.”
An inquiry into Almalki’s case is currently underway.
Almalki says he also chose to speak out to teach others about torture.
He has talked publicly of his experiences in forums across Ontario and in places as far as London, England, and Norway.
“I think it’s important for people to know what torture is,” he says.
“The Canadian government, the American government, CSIS, the RCMP, internal affairs, the issue of torture came up many times in their meetings. Apparently they are all complicit in my torture, but do they really understand what torture is?”
Almalki says learning to speak about what happened was a difficult process. He says he still phrases his torture in general rather than specific terms.
“I’d have to bring my mind back to that place and bring back the details,” he says. “And it was very hard for me to do that.”
* * *
In March 2006, Almalki launched a lawsuit against the 13 government officials he believed responsible for his treatment. Along with Ahmed Elmaati and Muayyed Nurredin — Canadians also tortured in Syria — he called for an inquiry.
That inquiry, while resisted by the previous government, was opened by former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci March 21 this year.
Yet Almalki is critical of what the government has called an “internal inquiry,” and fears its conclusions will be hid from the public.
“I have not spoken with a single lawyer who has heard this term before,” he says.
“The government says it wants the inquiry to inspire public confidence in Canadian agencies. If it’s a secret inquiry, I don’t think it will do that.”
Almalki says there is little chance the government was not aware of what was going on in the prison.
“It’s very well documented that in Syria, interrogation and torture go hand-in-hand,” he says.
And Almalki says he also doubts that the government had been operating with entirely good intentions.
Almalki was acquitted from all charges by Syrian courts after two years of detainment in 2004.
But Syrian officials then threatened Almalki with more time for violating his compulsory military service, he says.
He had waived that duty before through legal means, but had been unable to defer it while he was in jail.
To prevent being detained again, he sought shelter in the Canadian embassy. They turned him down, forcing Almalki to flee the country alone.
“Don’t we need to know that these people, who are entrusted with our security, are held accountable?” Almalki says.
He also says the questions Syrian officials asked during his interrogations were often the same as those that CSIS agents asked in interviews dating back to 1998. He says that led him to believe the two countries must have been communicating about his interrogation.
“The questions were the same and they were put to the same person, who was me,” he says. “The only difference is the one who is asking the questions and what he is holding in his hand.”
* * *
Almalki says he does not know why the government would act as he says they did.
But the harsh methods used to draw information from him would never have been available to Canadian intelligence, he says.
“So the question is, why is the RCMP, CSIS and we don’t know who else sub-contracting interrogation and torture to other countries?” he says.
While the inquiry has required Almalki and his lawyers to sift through what he says are thousands of documents pertaining to the case, Almalki says he is continuing to recover physically and mentally from his torture.
He says he went through five psychiatrists and psychologists before seeing improvement.
“For the first year after I came back, all the scheduling on my calendar was just doctors’ appointments,” he says.
“I went from one doctor to another. It took a long time for things to get back to normal, and some of the problems I still have.”
One of those problems is a displaced jaw, which Almalki says leaves him terrified at the thought of going to the dentist.
And he says it would be especially difficult for him to return to his former profession as a businessman and engineer for an export company.
He says he has found himself unable to count numbers in his head or remember names as well as he could before.
Most importantly, he says, he lost his reputation because of his investigation — an investigation that he says is continuing.
He says it makes him especially afraid to travel, and he brings a lawyer when he does.
Yet regardless of the investigation, he says, he and others deserve an apology.
“Had it been that any of the three of us were charged with anything, does that justify the RCMP being complicit in torture?” he asks.
Almalki says he hopes the inquiry will clear his name and that an apology will give him and his family the closure they need.
And, he says, he hopes it will restore accountability to intelligence agencies and end state-sponsored torture.
“I’m speaking out not because I hate this country, but because I love it,” he says.
“I love this country and I want my kids to have a better future than what I went through.”
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