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It is certainly a good idea to keep this case in the public eye but I doubt that the call for another inquiry has much chance of success with the Iacobucci Inquiry still going on.
Caravan demands public inquiry into cases of three Muslim Canadians tortured abroad
Posted 1 day ago
Belleville – Three Canadian Muslim men who suffered torture in Syria and Egypt were in Belleville May 6 to talk about their experience and their move to initiate a public inquiry into their torture.
A small crowd gathered at Christ Church on Everett Street May 6 to listen to the stories of three men who are travelling from Toronto to Ottawa raising awareness and support for the Caravan Against Canadian Involvement in Torture.
Matthew Behrens of Homes not Bombs said that when you are walking through communities dressed in orange jumpsuits and black hoods, as the caravan has been, “it hits people.”
Using documentation from the widely publicized 2006 Arar Commission Report into the deportation, detention and torture of Canadian Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki shared the story of his own torture in Syria over a period of 22 months and seven days.
Almalki, a father of six with an engineering degree from the University of Ottawa, is a Canadian citizen who was arrested in Syria on the way to visit his ailing grandmother. He has never been charged with any crime in Canada or had an arrest warrant issued against him, nor has any evidence of criminal behaviour ever been produced.
He said following 9/11 he and his family were harassed by the RCMP, including having every package sent to his business opened by customs, unmarked cars following him and his wife, and a camera installed across the street from their home. Family and friends were also questioned.
The harassment became “too much” when he and his wife took a trip to Malaysia to visit her family in 2001, and he was detained and questioned in Malaysia for several hours before being cleared of any wrongdoing.
When he was detained in Syria in 2002, Almalki's family was told it was based on “information from abroad.”
Almalki described the “inhumane” conditions he endured for most of his time in Syria and explained some of the torture methods he was subjected to, which included being whipped with electrical cable for hours at a time. The majority of his time was spent in a cell smaller than a grave.
“They want you to give them something, but if you don't give them something they keep torturing you,” Almalki said, adding a Syrian official later told him, “we beat you until we got convinced you had nothing.”
It was two months before he was taken outside for the first time, a day that Almalki said he “found for the first time in life how beautiful the sky was.”
Almalki said he never had a single consular visit during the 22 months he was detained and said the RCMP was subjecting him to “interrogation by proxy” knowing full well torture was being used to obtain information.
“I was deprived from hugging any one of my children for two years,” Almalki said.
He said CSIS and the RCMP smeared him, destroyed his business and his life and left him with physical and emotional trauma.
“Many of my most fundamental human rights have been blatantly violated,” Almalki said.
Although he is well-spoken, Almalki said the ordeal left his brain “dead” as he got through the time by trying not to think about anything outside the cell he was in as a method of preserving his sanity. He also said he has been told it will be at least a few years before his brain is functioning at the level it was before his detention and torture.
“I will not claim that I kept my sanity the whole time,” he said in response to an audience question.
Muayyed Nureddin, a Toronto-area geologist, was detained in 2004 as he crossed into Syria to fly home from visiting family in Iraq. He said he was unable to travel under the dictatorship in Iraq before coming to Canada in 1994 and after his detention for a month and being submitted to torture, he is too scared to travel again.
“I want to be able to travel again, and I want to believe in this democracy again,” said Nureddin.
Nureddin, Almalki and Ahmad El Maati, who was also detained and tortured in both Syria and Egypt, are appealing to the prime minister to open a public inquiry into their cases.
An internal inquiry, led by retired Supreme Court of Canada Justice Frank Iacobucci was established in 2006 to investigate the three cases, but questions have been raised its secrecy, which has given rise to doubts about the inquiry's ability to provide justice for the three men and to instill public confidence.
Neither the trio nor their lawyers are privy to proceedings or seeing any evidence in the inquiry.
Almalki said the secrecy has forced him to be away from his family in Ottawa once again, “telling personal things” in order to raise awareness.
Behrens said the inquiry has 35,000 documents and has interviewed 40 witnesses and the Caravan Against Canadian Involvement in Torture is working to stop Canadian complicity in torture.
More information about the campaign is available at www.homesnotbombs.ca. More information about Almalki and his case is available at www.abdullahalmalki.com.
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