Inquiry urged to shed secrecy

This is from the Star.
The whole idea of an internal inquiry is precisely to justify the secrecy and lack of many public hearings. Iacobucci will probably have one or two useless facesaving public sessions before he finishes but not even this is for sure. Anyway the whole inquiry is a high-priced farce with a cast of high-profile high paid lawyers all from one law firm Torys LLP. The three Canadians in whose names the inquiry was called will have no chance to clear their names that is crystal clear. As John Laskin put it the inquiry is solely to look into the conduct of officials. It is being done behind closed doors with none of the lawyers for the Almalki, Nureddin, or El-Maati being present. The public website was castrated as of the end of May. Not a single ejaculation from Iacobucci or his male legal counsel since then: no summaries ,updates, description of processes, lists of witnesses, no nothing, nada.
The Arar inquiry which ended up punishing not a single person for gross misconduct was nevertheless a terrible shock to the government. In order to avoid suits the government negotiated a multi-million dollar settlement with Arar. Never again. In the name of national security and saving the government from more successful suits Almalki, Nureddin, and El-Maati will never be able to clear their names.

Inquiry urged to shed secrecy

Groups want greater public access to hearings on how cases against Muslim Canadians were handled

Oct 10, 2007 04:30 AM
Tonda MacCharles
Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA–Amnesty International Canada and six other advocacy groups say they are being "used" to lend credibility to a secretive inquiry into how security agencies handled the cases of three Muslim Canadians who allege torture at the hands of Middle East interrogators.

The groups say they have been completely shut out since being granted legal standing last spring at the internal inquiry being led by former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci into the cases of Ahmad Elmaati, Abdullah Almalki, and Muayyed Nureddin.

"Even more dramatically, that applies for the three men and their legal teams," said Amnesty secretary general Alex Neve. "They too have not seen single word on a single page of a single document and have not been allowed into the room for one hour of any interview of any of the government officials who are being examined."

Neve released an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper calling on the government to champion greater public access to the workings of the inquiry.

The letter was signed by Amnesty, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Organization, the Canadian Arab Federation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Canada, the Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association, and Human Rights Watch.

Iacobucci is due to report back to the federal government by the end of January. Neve said more public access could be granted "without unduly delaying the process."

But Iacobucci's commission counsel John Laskin said the groups have already met in "off the record" sessions with the inquiry's legal team and once with Iacobucci.

Neve said the meetings were merely procedural updates.

Laskin said the inquiry is bound by its terms of reference to do an "internal inquiry" not a "public" inquiry.