Torture victims barred from probe.

This is from the Star.
Harper will not do anythinig to open the inquiry. He has full confidence in Iacobucci and in the narrow terms of its mandate. The three really don't get it.
The whole idea is to ensure that they do not get any ammunition for law suits. The Arar inquiry was the first and last real attempt at justice. Make no mistake. This inquiry is simply looking at the actions of certain officials it is not going to reveal a single shred of evidence that might help the three clear their names. All the questioning is behind closed doors by the big lawyers of Torys LLP. Nothing of what is happening has been revealed to the public and little to the lawyers.
There may very well be further public inquiries as a face saving device but that will change nothing. There is also a motion before the courts to open the inquiry but it is doubtful that will achieve anything. When it fails the three should simply walk out with their lawyers for otherwise they lend credibility to an inquiry that deserves none.


Torture victims barred from probe

Oct 13, 2007 04:30 AM
tonda maccharles
ottawa bureau

OTTAWA–Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rejected a request by three Muslim Canadian men for access to the closed-door inquiry into how they came to be interrogated and tortured in the Middle East.

Harper responded within an hour after Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin and their lawyers all pleaded at a news conference for the Prime Minister to widen a judge's terms of reference to allow a more public review of the actions of Canadian officials that may have led to the men's detention and torture.

All three separately were confined, interrogated and tortured at the same Syrian detention centre where Maher Arar was jailed. One of them was also shipped to Egypt to similar treatment.

They say they have been reduced to bystanders in the inquiry led by former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Frank Iacobucci, which they had hoped would clear their names.

"Why the secrecy?" asked a frustrated Almalki, who was released in July 2004 after 22 months in prison. He accused the government of deliberately designing an "internal inquiry" to "handcuff" the commission and to limit the scope of its review. The Iacobucci inquiry was appointed last December in response to a recommendation by the Arar commission of inquiry for an independent but more expedient review of the men's cases.

Harper said Iacobucci has all the powers needed to conduct public hearings as he sees fit, and the government will not intervene.

"Justice Iacobucci has been given a wide mandate," Harper told a news conference. "He obviously has to look at considerations of what needs to be held in private for various reasons of, you know, either national security or protection of individuals.

"But Justice Iacobucci has all the power necessary to decide whether something should be held in private or whether it can be held in public. He's an eminent Canadian jurist, former Supreme Court justice. The government has given him that mandate and the government isn't going to interfere in how he conducts the inquiry."

To date, Iacobucci's legal team has interviewed, in private and under oath, about 40 witnesses from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Department of Foreign Affairs, said lead counsel John Laskin.

That work, akin to "taking depositions," is almost complete, said Laskin.

"This is very much an inquisitorial process," he said. "That's what we're engaged in. We bear a heavy burden as inquiry counsel and the commissioner to represent the public interest in getting to the bottom of events here, but that's what we're bound and determined to do."

None of the men or their lawyers has been present for the substantive portion of that work, nor have they seen summaries of evidence, documents or even the names of documents.

Lawyer Barbara Jackman said the group is not asking Harper to interfere with the judge's "decision making."

"We're asking for a fair process."

For the men, being shut out is agonizing.

El Maati, who returned in March 2004 after two years and two months in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, quoted an Arabic expression: "Waiting is worse than dying. How long must I – I ask this government – must I continue waiting like that? I'm here today to ask Prime Minister Harper to help us and all Canadians get answers."