The Canadian Injustice Department position on Iacobucci's mandate

So how do the three clear their names by another inquiry? By suing the government? The unaccountability can go on forever. There has been no accountability at all by anyone as a result of the Arar affair. O'Connor is still trying to get portions of his report released. People involved have been promoted in some cases. Zacardelli is out only because of his own foolishness in testimony not because of what was done to Arar. Only recommendations will come out of this report and the whole issue will be forgotten. Many lawyers will be richer. The three suspects will remain with suspicions hanging over their heads and probably investigators carrying on as before.

Inquiry can't clear names of three jailed in Mideast, Ottawa advises Iacobucci
JEFF SALLOT

OTTAWA -- The Justice Department says the inquiry into three Canadian men who were imprisoned and allegedly tortured in the Middle East as terrorist suspects at the same time as Maher Arar will be unable to clear their names.

The inquiry's terms of reference "do not provide a vehicle by which these individuals can properly seek to clear their names," the department said in documents released yesterday.

But neither can the inquiry "condemn these individuals" in its final report, the department said.

Inquiry chairman Frank Iacobucci, a retired Supreme Court of Canada judge, will conduct procedural hearings on Tuesday. He has asked lawyers for the Justice Department, the three men and human-rights groups that have been granted intervenor status for their views about how he is to interpret his mandate from the Conservative government.

If he accepts the Justice Department's interpretation, it could mean clouds of suspicion may linger over the heads of Abdullah Almalki, an Ottawa businessman, and Torontonians Ahmad El Maati, a truck driver, and Muayyed Nureddin, a geologist.

At an earlier inquiry into the Arar case, RCMP witnesses described Mr. Almalki and Mr. El Maati as major targets of ongoing terrorist investigations.

The Arar commission last year cleared the Canadian computer engineer of any suspicion of terrorist activity and said he had been the subject of a smear campaign by people in government. The Arar commission also said it is very likely that incorrect intelligence reports passed by the RCMP to U.S. authorities led to his deportation from New York to Syria, where he was tortured.

Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor of Ontario, the chairman of the Arar commission, also recommended a further probe into the cases of the other three men.

The three have said they want a public inquiry to clear their names as well.

But the Justice Department documents stress that the Iacobucci investigation is strictly an internal inquiry to determine if Canadian officials were complicit in the arrests, detention and mistreatment of the men in Syria and Egypt. Most hearings will be in secret.

"This internal inquiry is an investigative and inquisitorial proceeding, not a judicial or adversarial one," the department said. "There is no right or wrong answer and no individual's specific interests are to be served."

Meanwhile, Canadian Arab and civil-liberties groups have jointly filed a chronology of known events that they say raises serious questions about Canadian complicity in the ordeals of the three men.

When he was investigating the Arar case, Judge O'Connor was prevented by his restrictive terms of reference from delving into the conduct of Mounties, officers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and diplomats in the three other cases. The government claimed national security trumped the public interest in the disclosure of much of this information.