I just finished listening to part of this conference. Almalki hardly needs a laywer, he seemed to be the most articulate of anyone at the conference. He claims his cognitive powers have been diminished by torture. It wasn't evident at the conference!
It seems that the report is more positive for the civil cases of the three than I had thought. Iacobucci clearly notes that some of the labelling of the three as terrorists and as associated with Al Qaeda was mistaken or not well established.
The lawyers stressed the fact that the inquiry had established that the three had been tortured- although this had been established earlier in the Arar inquiry. They also noted that Canadian officials had indirectly caused their incarceration and resulting torture.
However, Iacobucci claims that officials were just doing their job as they saw it. So there is nothing malicious about labelling someone a terrorist without good evidence or sending questions to jailors who torture and asking for answers. Maybe it is not malicious but it should be grounds for dismissal. It shows gross incompetence or else being part of a bigger plan which cannot be revealed because it would jeapordize national security through poisoning our relationships with the intelligence agencies of other countries. Note that in the US Arar is still on record as being a member of Al Qaeda, that is why he was deported to Syria to be interrogated and tortured. In my opinion all three cases investigated were examples of adventitious rendition. The three were in Syria and the Canadian authorities took the occasion to give information to Syrian authorities that resulted in their arrests and interrogation. Of course the Iacobucci inquiry failed to reach that conclusion.
Showing posts with label Nureddin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nureddin. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Inside Canada's secret inquiry
This is from the Ottawa Citizen.
The Iacobbuci Inquiry into the cases of three Canadian Muslims tortured in Syria is to report to the government on Monday but it may be a few days before the report is released to the public. I think it is significant that it was not released before the election. The subsequent furor could have influenced the outcome perhaps. In spite of the secrecy of the report I expect that there will be some criticism of Canadian officials. As in the Arar report there will be no action taken against anyone. Perhaps as in the Arar affair some of them may even be promoted. There will be no help for the three in whose name the inquiry was undertaken in clearing their name. In fact the three involved had little role in the inquiry and were given no clue as to what the evidence was against them and they probably never will be. The government is not about to face another inquiry of the sort that Arar had. Revealing the incompetence of intelligence operatives and having to pay compensation for bad treatment is not something the government wishes to continually face!
After this report there will be a flurry of publicity but then Iacobucci can collect his fat fee and everything will go back to the way it was and Almalki, El-Maati, and Nurredin will have to continue to fight to try to clear their names and get any compensation from the government.
Inside Canada's 'secret' inquiry
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, October 18, 2008
CREDIT: Bruno Schlumberger, the Ottawa Citizen
'I think secrecy is the enemy of democracy,' says Abdullah Almalki, 37, an Ottawa father of six and a Carleton University engineering grad who endured 22 months in Syrian jails.
On Monday, the report into the treatment of three Arab-Canadian men who were detained and tortured in a Syrian jail is expected to be handed into the government.
The commission was conducted behind closed doors, and as Andrew Duffy reports, that is leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of the men at the centre of this review.
During Justice Dennis O'Connor's inquiry into the Maher Arar case, he heard startling evidence about three other Arab-Canadians who were similarly detained and tortured in Syria.
In his report, Judge O'Connor concluded that what happened to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin raised troubling questions when considered alongside Mr. Arar's experience.
The four Canadian citizens had all been detained and tortured in the same Damascus military prison. All four were under investigation by the RCMP or CSIS at the time for alleged terrorist connections.
Judge O'Connor said that while it was "most unlikely" that Canadian officials had a policy of using foreign agencies to further national security probes at home, the cases nonetheless displayed a "pattern of investigative practices" that pointed to systemic problems.
Those problems, he said, went beyond Mr. Arar's case and needed to be addressed.
"I have heard enough evidence about the cases of Messrs. Almalki, El-Maati and Nureddin to observe that these cases should be reviewed," the judge wrote in September, 2006. He called for a second inquiry to fully investigate.
More than two years later, the federal inquiry that the Arar commission inspired is about to report its findings. Retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci will deliver his report to the federal government on Monday; it is expected to be made public later in the week.
But human rights groups -- and the three men themselves -- yesterday denounced the secretive process employed by Mr. Iacobucci and called for it never to be used again.
"The secrecy was not limited to national security concerns: it extended to everything," said Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. "That is virtually unprecedented in Canada and undermined fairness and the public interest from the very outset."
The Iacobucci inquiry has been marked by controversy.
One intervenor, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, withdrew from the inquiry in December 2007 to protest what it said was a "dangerous precedent for closed-door, secret inquiries."
The inquiry interviewed 40 witnesses in-camera and collected 40,000 documents. None of the documents were released to the public and none of the witnesses were cross-examined by lawyers for the three men. Even the witness list remains confidential.
The three men testified about their experiences with torture, but they were not allowed to read the final submissions delivered by their own lawyers -- in case Mr. Iacobucci decided to recall them as witnesses.
The men say they've been treated as outcasts by an inquiry that is supposed to discover the extent of the Canadian complicity in their torture.
"It is a strange and alarming process," said Mr. Almalki, 37, an Ottawa father of six and a Carleton University engineering graduate who endured 22 months in Syrian jails.
Mr. Almalki was repeatedly interrogated and tortured, he said, based on information that could only have originated with Canadian security agencies.
The Arar report has confirmed that the RCMP sent questions to the Syrians to be put to Mr. Almalki. But he contends that Canadian officials continued to pass information to the Syrians even after Mr. Arar warned the federal government that the Syrians were torturing detainees.
Mr. Almalki said the inquiry's secrecy has frustrated his ability to test the truth of what government officials have said about him, his alleged terrorist connections and what happened to him in Syria.
"I think secrecy is the enemy of democracy," said Mr. Almalki, who has repeatedly denied any connection to al-Qaeda.
Mr. El-Maati, a Toronto truck driver who was held in Syria and Egypt for more than two years, told reporters yesterday that the process has inspired no confidence: "How can we trust the findings of an inquiry that has only heard one side of the story?"
Mr. Iacobucci has defended the secretive process as necessary to fulfil his mandate. His terms of reference emphasized "the internal or private nature" of the inquiry, Mr. Iacobucci has said, and the need to protect national security information.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day created the inquiry in December 2006 to examine the actions of Canadian officials that may have led to the detention and mistreatment of the three men.
The internal inquiry was in keeping with Mr. O'Connor's opinion that public inquiries into national security cases can be "time-consuming and expensive" exercises. The Arar inquiry included protracted legal argument about what information had to be shielded for the sake of national security.
But Mr. Almalki's lawyer, Jasminka Kalajdzic, said Mr. Iacobucci's mandate did not require complete secrecy. That approach, she said, was ultimately for the sake of expediency, not national security.
"In the more than 400 inquiries convened in our country since Confederation," she said, "this is the only one where the public has been excluded for reasons other than national security confidentiality."
Mr. Neve said the inquiry went "terribly wrong" from the start with a mandate that made it chiefly about Canadian officials. It meant, he said, that the inquiry functioned as if it was not about the men named in its title and so afforded them few legal rights.
In her new book, Dark Days, Ottawa human rights activist Kerry Pither contends that the three men were imprisoned in Syria because of an orchestrated campaign by Canadian security agencies to neutralize people they wrongly believed to be terrorist threats. To be credible, she said, the Iacobucci inquiry must tell Canadians why the men were labelled Islamic extremists.
"Because how they were labelled in communications with the media and with foreign governments would most certainly have had an impact on the decision to detain in Syria, the length of their detention and how they were treated," she said. "It would also have an impact on Canadian officials and how hard they worked for their release."
For his part, Mr. Almalki has a list of 30 questions he wants answered by the inquiry. Among them: Who sent information about him to the Syrians and why? Why did Canadian diplomats and security agents meet with Syrian military intelligence, the organization responsible for his torture? Why did no Canadian Embassy officials visit him while he was in Sryian custody?
Mr. Almalki said there remains, too, a basic question about the role of Canadian officials: "Is it that they didn't care I would be tortured or did they want me to be tortured?"
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008
The Iacobbuci Inquiry into the cases of three Canadian Muslims tortured in Syria is to report to the government on Monday but it may be a few days before the report is released to the public. I think it is significant that it was not released before the election. The subsequent furor could have influenced the outcome perhaps. In spite of the secrecy of the report I expect that there will be some criticism of Canadian officials. As in the Arar report there will be no action taken against anyone. Perhaps as in the Arar affair some of them may even be promoted. There will be no help for the three in whose name the inquiry was undertaken in clearing their name. In fact the three involved had little role in the inquiry and were given no clue as to what the evidence was against them and they probably never will be. The government is not about to face another inquiry of the sort that Arar had. Revealing the incompetence of intelligence operatives and having to pay compensation for bad treatment is not something the government wishes to continually face!
After this report there will be a flurry of publicity but then Iacobucci can collect his fat fee and everything will go back to the way it was and Almalki, El-Maati, and Nurredin will have to continue to fight to try to clear their names and get any compensation from the government.
Inside Canada's 'secret' inquiry
The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, October 18, 2008
CREDIT: Bruno Schlumberger, the Ottawa Citizen
'I think secrecy is the enemy of democracy,' says Abdullah Almalki, 37, an Ottawa father of six and a Carleton University engineering grad who endured 22 months in Syrian jails.
On Monday, the report into the treatment of three Arab-Canadian men who were detained and tortured in a Syrian jail is expected to be handed into the government.
The commission was conducted behind closed doors, and as Andrew Duffy reports, that is leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of the men at the centre of this review.
During Justice Dennis O'Connor's inquiry into the Maher Arar case, he heard startling evidence about three other Arab-Canadians who were similarly detained and tortured in Syria.
In his report, Judge O'Connor concluded that what happened to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin raised troubling questions when considered alongside Mr. Arar's experience.
The four Canadian citizens had all been detained and tortured in the same Damascus military prison. All four were under investigation by the RCMP or CSIS at the time for alleged terrorist connections.
Judge O'Connor said that while it was "most unlikely" that Canadian officials had a policy of using foreign agencies to further national security probes at home, the cases nonetheless displayed a "pattern of investigative practices" that pointed to systemic problems.
Those problems, he said, went beyond Mr. Arar's case and needed to be addressed.
"I have heard enough evidence about the cases of Messrs. Almalki, El-Maati and Nureddin to observe that these cases should be reviewed," the judge wrote in September, 2006. He called for a second inquiry to fully investigate.
More than two years later, the federal inquiry that the Arar commission inspired is about to report its findings. Retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci will deliver his report to the federal government on Monday; it is expected to be made public later in the week.
But human rights groups -- and the three men themselves -- yesterday denounced the secretive process employed by Mr. Iacobucci and called for it never to be used again.
"The secrecy was not limited to national security concerns: it extended to everything," said Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. "That is virtually unprecedented in Canada and undermined fairness and the public interest from the very outset."
The Iacobucci inquiry has been marked by controversy.
One intervenor, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, withdrew from the inquiry in December 2007 to protest what it said was a "dangerous precedent for closed-door, secret inquiries."
The inquiry interviewed 40 witnesses in-camera and collected 40,000 documents. None of the documents were released to the public and none of the witnesses were cross-examined by lawyers for the three men. Even the witness list remains confidential.
The three men testified about their experiences with torture, but they were not allowed to read the final submissions delivered by their own lawyers -- in case Mr. Iacobucci decided to recall them as witnesses.
The men say they've been treated as outcasts by an inquiry that is supposed to discover the extent of the Canadian complicity in their torture.
"It is a strange and alarming process," said Mr. Almalki, 37, an Ottawa father of six and a Carleton University engineering graduate who endured 22 months in Syrian jails.
Mr. Almalki was repeatedly interrogated and tortured, he said, based on information that could only have originated with Canadian security agencies.
The Arar report has confirmed that the RCMP sent questions to the Syrians to be put to Mr. Almalki. But he contends that Canadian officials continued to pass information to the Syrians even after Mr. Arar warned the federal government that the Syrians were torturing detainees.
Mr. Almalki said the inquiry's secrecy has frustrated his ability to test the truth of what government officials have said about him, his alleged terrorist connections and what happened to him in Syria.
"I think secrecy is the enemy of democracy," said Mr. Almalki, who has repeatedly denied any connection to al-Qaeda.
Mr. El-Maati, a Toronto truck driver who was held in Syria and Egypt for more than two years, told reporters yesterday that the process has inspired no confidence: "How can we trust the findings of an inquiry that has only heard one side of the story?"
Mr. Iacobucci has defended the secretive process as necessary to fulfil his mandate. His terms of reference emphasized "the internal or private nature" of the inquiry, Mr. Iacobucci has said, and the need to protect national security information.
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day created the inquiry in December 2006 to examine the actions of Canadian officials that may have led to the detention and mistreatment of the three men.
The internal inquiry was in keeping with Mr. O'Connor's opinion that public inquiries into national security cases can be "time-consuming and expensive" exercises. The Arar inquiry included protracted legal argument about what information had to be shielded for the sake of national security.
But Mr. Almalki's lawyer, Jasminka Kalajdzic, said Mr. Iacobucci's mandate did not require complete secrecy. That approach, she said, was ultimately for the sake of expediency, not national security.
"In the more than 400 inquiries convened in our country since Confederation," she said, "this is the only one where the public has been excluded for reasons other than national security confidentiality."
Mr. Neve said the inquiry went "terribly wrong" from the start with a mandate that made it chiefly about Canadian officials. It meant, he said, that the inquiry functioned as if it was not about the men named in its title and so afforded them few legal rights.
In her new book, Dark Days, Ottawa human rights activist Kerry Pither contends that the three men were imprisoned in Syria because of an orchestrated campaign by Canadian security agencies to neutralize people they wrongly believed to be terrorist threats. To be credible, she said, the Iacobucci inquiry must tell Canadians why the men were labelled Islamic extremists.
"Because how they were labelled in communications with the media and with foreign governments would most certainly have had an impact on the decision to detain in Syria, the length of their detention and how they were treated," she said. "It would also have an impact on Canadian officials and how hard they worked for their release."
For his part, Mr. Almalki has a list of 30 questions he wants answered by the inquiry. Among them: Who sent information about him to the Syrians and why? Why did Canadian diplomats and security agents meet with Syrian military intelligence, the organization responsible for his torture? Why did no Canadian Embassy officials visit him while he was in Sryian custody?
Mr. Almalki said there remains, too, a basic question about the role of Canadian officials: "Is it that they didn't care I would be tortured or did they want me to be tortured?"
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Travelling 'torture caravan' disturbing sign of the times.
This is from the Star.
Almalki, Nurredin, and El Maati deserve a lot of credit for mounting this publicity campaign. The campaign is bringing the issue to many people who would otherwise hardly know or think about the issues. There is nothing like face to face interaction for influencing people's thoughts and feelings. It is easy for people just to shrug off the rare reports that are heard in the mainstream media. Arar received plenty of publicity and became for a time a media star but these three are very much in the shadows. The Iacobucci inquiry has been carried on in almost total secrecy. The final report will not even be seen by the public, just a summary. In the name of national security reality will be kept from us and after a great deal of hand wringing and a flurry of media attention, some criticism of the intelligence services and a number of recommendations things will go on as before except Iacobucci will receive a hefty fee for his labours in the darkness. There will be no compensation for Almalki, Nurredin, and El Maati unless they somehow manage to mount an effective suit against the government. It is possible that Iacobucci might recommend some action on compensation but I think that is probably wishful thinking. It is not part of his mandate and so far he has been very careful to narrow the inquiry as much as possible.
Travelling 'torture caravan' disturbing sign of the times TheStar.com - comment - Travelling 'torture caravan' disturbing sign of the times
.
While inquiry meets in private, tortured trio bring tales of terror to small-town Ontario
June 09, 2008 Heba Aly
It is a bizarre feeling – eating, walking, laughing with men who have been hung from their wrists and beaten with electric cables. To see them behave so normally despite their experiences is a bit destabilizing.
But for five days, that is what I did, as three men – Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin and Ahmad El Maati – travelled from small town to small town, telling Canadians their stories and pushing for a public inquiry into what happened to them.
All three men – Canadian citizens, but also Arab and Muslim – were detained and tortured in a Syrian prison on unproven suspicions of terrorism. They accuse the Canadian government of complicity in their torture. None has ever been charged with a crime.
Toronto-based Nureddin, for example, had fled his homeland of Iraq in 1991. As as a Turkman, he was discriminated against under Saddam Hussein's regime. When the regime was toppled in 2003, Nureddin decided to go back to visit family he had not seen in nine years. On his way back to Canada, he was stopped on the Iraq-Syria border and thrown into jail. During questioning, he was asked the same questions by his Syrian torturers that he had been asked months before by a Canadian security intelligence official – a sign, he says, that the questions must have originated from Canada.
The stories of these men echo that of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was detained and tortured in the same infamous prison in Syria. He has since received an official apology from the Canadian government and $10 million in compensation after a public inquiry established that his torture was due in part to information the RCMP shared internationally, falsely identifying him as a terrorist.
The report that emerged from that inquiry found that the RCMP sent questions about one of the other men, Ottawa engineer Almalki, to Syrian interrogators knowing that questioning could result in torture.
A second inquiry is now looking into the role Canadian officials played in these three cases, but it is being conducted in almost-total secrecy. The men themselves, their lawyers, the public and the media are not allowed to attend. They have seen no documents and cross-examined no witnesses.
This has caused endless frustration for Almalki, Nureddin and El Maati, who are still trying to recover from the emotional and psychological scars of their torture abroad – only to face a new struggle upon returning to Canada.
"For me, this inquiry is another form of torture because I don't know what's going on," El Maati said. "My life is on the line; my reputation is on the line."
And so one rainy day in May, these men, along with about 30 other regular Canadians, set off on a week-long caravan to try to do something about it. Organized by a group called Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, the caravan travelled from Toronto to Ottawa to raise awareness about these cases and build momentum for a public inquiry. It was an interesting bunch of people, to say the least.
There was Dick, the retired engineer and former Roman Catholic priest who had just turned 82. There was Tracy, the civil rights junkie who pulled her 13-year-old daughter out of school for a week to join the caravan, because, "What's better than a civil rights march?" And there were Vidya, Frank and their 10-month-old baby; the couple saw a random email about the caravan and decided it was too important an issue not to participate.
Reactions were varied when people saw the group sporting bright orange jumpsuits kneeling on the pavement, their bowed heads covered in black hoods, their hands behind their backs – now a worldwide symbol of torture.
Some wanted no part of it. "I'm the torturer!" one Correctional Services Canada staff screamed mockingly as she drove past the group's silent vigil outside a maximum-security prison in Bath, Ont.
Others were eager to hear more. In many of the mostly white, middle-class towns we travelled through, passersby had no idea that this alleged "Canadian torture" even existed. They had never heard of Maher Arar, let alone any of the others who have undergone similar ordeals.
Still, support was surprisingly high. At Trenton, home to a Canadian Forces Base, one soldier signed the petition asking the Prime Minister to make the inquiry public. In Cobourg, three high-school classes gave the men a standing ovation after hearing their stories.
"Ahmad. Muayyed," one high-school teacher repeated to himself as he walked down the hallways of his school. "I'm practising the names," he said with a chuckle.
And just as it was destabilizing for me to watch these men connect with the public on such a personal level, it was destabilizing for them, too. After so many months in isolation, seeing how much people cared was a bit overwhelming.
"Part of the healing process as a torture victim is to be recognized," Nureddin told me after lunch one day as we sat in the basement of a church hosting us in Napanee. "The public has recognized us. That recognition means they trust in (my) story." That was a first for Nureddin, who until then had shied away from sharing his experience publicly.
In September, retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci, who is overseeing the latest inquiry, will release his findings. Only a summary of the report will be public. The government argues more disclosure would pose a risk to national security.
But for Almalki, getting answers is essential – not just for him, but for all Canadians.
"It's extremely important that we get to know the full truth of what happened to all of us. That is because ... it looks like it is a pattern. It's not just one case or two cases or three cases," he told a crowd gathered at Kingston's Public Library.
"This doesn't just affect me and my family or Muslims. It affects all of us. It defines who we are as a country."
It seems their call for some answers is being met with a sympathetic ear from Canadians. Consider these thoughts from some of the people we met along the way:
"I think you're doing us all a favour," Kevin Doyle said at a public lecture in Ottawa. "What happened to you is a change in North American society that is detrimental to all of us. Many of us who were born here are afraid of what's ahead. You give us the courage to do more to counteract this."
"For the first time in my life, I'm ashamed to be Canadian," high-school teacher Gary O'Dwyer told his students in Cobourg.
"I'm so disturbed," one lady said after hearing Almalki speak in Kingston. "I don't even want to think about it."
But that's just it. She has to. We all do. And the government certainly should.
Heba Aly is an Ottawa-based freelance journalist.
Almalki, Nurredin, and El Maati deserve a lot of credit for mounting this publicity campaign. The campaign is bringing the issue to many people who would otherwise hardly know or think about the issues. There is nothing like face to face interaction for influencing people's thoughts and feelings. It is easy for people just to shrug off the rare reports that are heard in the mainstream media. Arar received plenty of publicity and became for a time a media star but these three are very much in the shadows. The Iacobucci inquiry has been carried on in almost total secrecy. The final report will not even be seen by the public, just a summary. In the name of national security reality will be kept from us and after a great deal of hand wringing and a flurry of media attention, some criticism of the intelligence services and a number of recommendations things will go on as before except Iacobucci will receive a hefty fee for his labours in the darkness. There will be no compensation for Almalki, Nurredin, and El Maati unless they somehow manage to mount an effective suit against the government. It is possible that Iacobucci might recommend some action on compensation but I think that is probably wishful thinking. It is not part of his mandate and so far he has been very careful to narrow the inquiry as much as possible.
Travelling 'torture caravan' disturbing sign of the times TheStar.com - comment - Travelling 'torture caravan' disturbing sign of the times
.
While inquiry meets in private, tortured trio bring tales of terror to small-town Ontario
June 09, 2008 Heba Aly
It is a bizarre feeling – eating, walking, laughing with men who have been hung from their wrists and beaten with electric cables. To see them behave so normally despite their experiences is a bit destabilizing.
But for five days, that is what I did, as three men – Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin and Ahmad El Maati – travelled from small town to small town, telling Canadians their stories and pushing for a public inquiry into what happened to them.
All three men – Canadian citizens, but also Arab and Muslim – were detained and tortured in a Syrian prison on unproven suspicions of terrorism. They accuse the Canadian government of complicity in their torture. None has ever been charged with a crime.
Toronto-based Nureddin, for example, had fled his homeland of Iraq in 1991. As as a Turkman, he was discriminated against under Saddam Hussein's regime. When the regime was toppled in 2003, Nureddin decided to go back to visit family he had not seen in nine years. On his way back to Canada, he was stopped on the Iraq-Syria border and thrown into jail. During questioning, he was asked the same questions by his Syrian torturers that he had been asked months before by a Canadian security intelligence official – a sign, he says, that the questions must have originated from Canada.
The stories of these men echo that of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was detained and tortured in the same infamous prison in Syria. He has since received an official apology from the Canadian government and $10 million in compensation after a public inquiry established that his torture was due in part to information the RCMP shared internationally, falsely identifying him as a terrorist.
The report that emerged from that inquiry found that the RCMP sent questions about one of the other men, Ottawa engineer Almalki, to Syrian interrogators knowing that questioning could result in torture.
A second inquiry is now looking into the role Canadian officials played in these three cases, but it is being conducted in almost-total secrecy. The men themselves, their lawyers, the public and the media are not allowed to attend. They have seen no documents and cross-examined no witnesses.
This has caused endless frustration for Almalki, Nureddin and El Maati, who are still trying to recover from the emotional and psychological scars of their torture abroad – only to face a new struggle upon returning to Canada.
"For me, this inquiry is another form of torture because I don't know what's going on," El Maati said. "My life is on the line; my reputation is on the line."
And so one rainy day in May, these men, along with about 30 other regular Canadians, set off on a week-long caravan to try to do something about it. Organized by a group called Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, the caravan travelled from Toronto to Ottawa to raise awareness about these cases and build momentum for a public inquiry. It was an interesting bunch of people, to say the least.
There was Dick, the retired engineer and former Roman Catholic priest who had just turned 82. There was Tracy, the civil rights junkie who pulled her 13-year-old daughter out of school for a week to join the caravan, because, "What's better than a civil rights march?" And there were Vidya, Frank and their 10-month-old baby; the couple saw a random email about the caravan and decided it was too important an issue not to participate.
Reactions were varied when people saw the group sporting bright orange jumpsuits kneeling on the pavement, their bowed heads covered in black hoods, their hands behind their backs – now a worldwide symbol of torture.
Some wanted no part of it. "I'm the torturer!" one Correctional Services Canada staff screamed mockingly as she drove past the group's silent vigil outside a maximum-security prison in Bath, Ont.
Others were eager to hear more. In many of the mostly white, middle-class towns we travelled through, passersby had no idea that this alleged "Canadian torture" even existed. They had never heard of Maher Arar, let alone any of the others who have undergone similar ordeals.
Still, support was surprisingly high. At Trenton, home to a Canadian Forces Base, one soldier signed the petition asking the Prime Minister to make the inquiry public. In Cobourg, three high-school classes gave the men a standing ovation after hearing their stories.
"Ahmad. Muayyed," one high-school teacher repeated to himself as he walked down the hallways of his school. "I'm practising the names," he said with a chuckle.
And just as it was destabilizing for me to watch these men connect with the public on such a personal level, it was destabilizing for them, too. After so many months in isolation, seeing how much people cared was a bit overwhelming.
"Part of the healing process as a torture victim is to be recognized," Nureddin told me after lunch one day as we sat in the basement of a church hosting us in Napanee. "The public has recognized us. That recognition means they trust in (my) story." That was a first for Nureddin, who until then had shied away from sharing his experience publicly.
In September, retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci, who is overseeing the latest inquiry, will release his findings. Only a summary of the report will be public. The government argues more disclosure would pose a risk to national security.
But for Almalki, getting answers is essential – not just for him, but for all Canadians.
"It's extremely important that we get to know the full truth of what happened to all of us. That is because ... it looks like it is a pattern. It's not just one case or two cases or three cases," he told a crowd gathered at Kingston's Public Library.
"This doesn't just affect me and my family or Muslims. It affects all of us. It defines who we are as a country."
It seems their call for some answers is being met with a sympathetic ear from Canadians. Consider these thoughts from some of the people we met along the way:
"I think you're doing us all a favour," Kevin Doyle said at a public lecture in Ottawa. "What happened to you is a change in North American society that is detrimental to all of us. Many of us who were born here are afraid of what's ahead. You give us the courage to do more to counteract this."
"For the first time in my life, I'm ashamed to be Canadian," high-school teacher Gary O'Dwyer told his students in Cobourg.
"I'm so disturbed," one lady said after hearing Almalki speak in Kingston. "I don't even want to think about it."
But that's just it. She has to. We all do. And the government certainly should.
Heba Aly is an Ottawa-based freelance journalist.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
New book next year on Arar and three other detainees
Since the book is not scheduled to be released until Fall of 2008 it may be able to comment on the results of the Iacobucci Inquiry due in January of 2008. One thing is certain the Iacobucci Inquiry will do absolutely nothing to help the three clear their name unlike the Arar inquiry. Virtually everything is being done in secrecy. The web page for the inquiry gives no information about what is happening. The last entry about what was new was published last April. About half the inquiry so far has taken place without the public knowing anything about what is going on: no summary, no news releases, nada.
New book will outline plight of Arar, three other detainees
Paul Gessell, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, September 14, 2007
There's been a play, an art show and a soon-to-released movie to tell the story, or one just like it, of Ottawa engineer Maher Arar. Next up is a book by family friend and social activist Kerry Pither.
Arar is not just a diplomatic incident or a political controversy. He has become an enduring figure in popular culture, a man with a story suitable for all media.
The wrongfully convicted grab our imagination like few others, with Steven Truscott, David Milgaard and Wilbert Coffin being other examples of Canadian men whose stories refuse to disappear from books, movies and theatres.
The tale of Ottawa engineer Maher Arar will be part of a book being penned by Kerry Pither.
Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen
The latest version of the Arar story is to surface in The Lucky Ones: Canadians Betrayed in the Name of Fighting Terror, which is to be published by Penguin, probably in the fall of 2008, the company announced yesterday.
That non-fiction book will examine the case of Arar and three other Muslim Canadian men -- Ahmad El Maati, Abdulla Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin -- who were all imprisoned and tortured in the same Syrian jail and eventually freed without any charges being laid against them anywhere.
After Arar's release, a federal inquiry exonerated him and recommended millions of dollars in compensation. Another inquiry, known as the Iacobucci Commission, is investigating the facts around the imprisonment of the other three Canadian men.
During Arar's detention, Pither worked closely with the man's wife, Monia Mazigh, Amnesty International and the Council on American Islamic Relations to free him and to push for a public inquiry. Frequently, Pither served as a spokeswoman for the Arar family.
"Once the Arar Inquiry was set up, Pither co-ordinated the work of 18 national and international human rights, labour, civil liberties and Muslim and Arab organizations with intervenor status, analysing documents, listening to testimony and proposing questions for witnesses," says a Penguin news release on the book.
Pither is now engaged in similar activities at the inquiry examining the events involving the other three men.
"Since the attacks of 9/11, much has been written about the 'terror suspects' through the eyes of investigating agencies," says Diane Turbide,
editorial director at Penguin Group (Canada). "Very little has been written about these investigations through the eyes of their targets.
"Kerry Pither will do this by telling the personal stories of these four men -- from their first encounters with CSIS and the RCMP, to their overseas
incarceration, torture and interrogation, to their eventual
release and the long wait for answers about the role of Canadian officials."
News of the forthcoming book has surfaced just as movie screens across North America prepare for the release of Rendition, a feature film about an Egyptian-American man jailed and tortured because of suspected terrorist links. Rendition is not based exclusively on, but is influenced by, the Arar story.
Arar was the subject of an exhibition of abstract art this summer at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. The exhibition by Garry Neill Kennedy was called The Colours of Citizen Arar and was inspired by horrifying anecdotes from his Syrian detention posted on Arar's personal website.
Two years ago, GCTC staged a play, Relative Good, that was inspired by Arar's case and echoed the events of his imprisonment.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
New book will outline plight of Arar, three other detainees
Paul Gessell, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, September 14, 2007
There's been a play, an art show and a soon-to-released movie to tell the story, or one just like it, of Ottawa engineer Maher Arar. Next up is a book by family friend and social activist Kerry Pither.
Arar is not just a diplomatic incident or a political controversy. He has become an enduring figure in popular culture, a man with a story suitable for all media.
The wrongfully convicted grab our imagination like few others, with Steven Truscott, David Milgaard and Wilbert Coffin being other examples of Canadian men whose stories refuse to disappear from books, movies and theatres.
The tale of Ottawa engineer Maher Arar will be part of a book being penned by Kerry Pither.
Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen
The latest version of the Arar story is to surface in The Lucky Ones: Canadians Betrayed in the Name of Fighting Terror, which is to be published by Penguin, probably in the fall of 2008, the company announced yesterday.
That non-fiction book will examine the case of Arar and three other Muslim Canadian men -- Ahmad El Maati, Abdulla Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin -- who were all imprisoned and tortured in the same Syrian jail and eventually freed without any charges being laid against them anywhere.
After Arar's release, a federal inquiry exonerated him and recommended millions of dollars in compensation. Another inquiry, known as the Iacobucci Commission, is investigating the facts around the imprisonment of the other three Canadian men.
During Arar's detention, Pither worked closely with the man's wife, Monia Mazigh, Amnesty International and the Council on American Islamic Relations to free him and to push for a public inquiry. Frequently, Pither served as a spokeswoman for the Arar family.
"Once the Arar Inquiry was set up, Pither co-ordinated the work of 18 national and international human rights, labour, civil liberties and Muslim and Arab organizations with intervenor status, analysing documents, listening to testimony and proposing questions for witnesses," says a Penguin news release on the book.
Pither is now engaged in similar activities at the inquiry examining the events involving the other three men.
"Since the attacks of 9/11, much has been written about the 'terror suspects' through the eyes of investigating agencies," says Diane Turbide,
editorial director at Penguin Group (Canada). "Very little has been written about these investigations through the eyes of their targets.
"Kerry Pither will do this by telling the personal stories of these four men -- from their first encounters with CSIS and the RCMP, to their overseas
incarceration, torture and interrogation, to their eventual
release and the long wait for answers about the role of Canadian officials."
News of the forthcoming book has surfaced just as movie screens across North America prepare for the release of Rendition, a feature film about an Egyptian-American man jailed and tortured because of suspected terrorist links. Rendition is not based exclusively on, but is influenced by, the Arar story.
Arar was the subject of an exhibition of abstract art this summer at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. The exhibition by Garry Neill Kennedy was called The Colours of Citizen Arar and was inspired by horrifying anecdotes from his Syrian detention posted on Arar's personal website.
Two years ago, GCTC staged a play, Relative Good, that was inspired by Arar's case and echoed the events of his imprisonment.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007
Friday, June 1, 2007
Almalki, Nurredin, and El-Maati have little access to Iacobucci Inquiry
Unlike the Arar Inquiry there will be no attempt at all to clear the three Canadians' names. This inquiry is a farce with a big name cast and no doubt a high price tag.
As well as the national security dodge, we now have the workability dodge, and the time dodge, and the non-trial dodge. However what is clear in spite of all the dodges is that the three will not see the evidence against them or be able to cross examine any of those interviewed--although they can ask questions indirectly. It is not clear what if any information they will receive about the answers or if they can ask further questions. There is really nothing in the mandate that involves assessing the case against the three. It will be interesting to see if the lawyers for the three even think it worth while to continue as part of the inquiry. Politicians should be demanding that the inquiry be expanded and allowed more time. Iacobucci is right, that the inquiry has to work fast to meet the deadline next January.
Even if Iacobucci does in the end come up with a report critical of intelligence services, it is unlikely anything will change or anyone will be held responsible. No one will be held accountable. Even in the Arar case Zaccardelli resigned only due to his own incapacity to absorb his coaching lessons on how to lie successfully.
Three Canadians blocked from hearings into ordeal
COLIN FREEZE
Globe and Mail Update
May 31, 2007 at 12:18 PM EDT
Three Canadian Arabs detained in Syria after Sept. 11, 2001, will be effectively shut out of largely secret hearings meant to determine the level of Canadian involvement in their ordeal, according to a ruling released this morning.
Mr. Justice Frank Iacobucci, who is heading a commission into the mistreatment of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, largely accepts the federal government's pleadings for national-security confidentiality in his new 32-page ruling on how is commission shall proceed.
The commission, which launched this year after the related inquiry into the Maher Arar affair, had been weighing arguments from the former detainees and their lawyers that they be granted access to hearings. Unlike the Arar commission, which was intended to be a publicly inquiry, the new commission was given an explicit mandate to proceed mostly in private.
While Judge Iacobucci entertained arguments for greater transparency, he largely rejected them, ruling that the need for ”workability” of the commission trumped the principle of open courts in this instance.
”The formal hearings conducted as part of this inquiry will be conducted in private, a term that I interpret to mean, in this context, in camera and ex parte,” Judge Iacobucci ruled.
Given the amount of sensitive information involved, he said that ”I do not find it workable or in many ways practical for the counsel for the individuals or the individuals themselves to receive security clearance or be present at all of the inquiries that my counsel or I will be making.
”This would unnecessarily prolong the inquiry and make it unworkable.”
Judge Iacobucci said he will try to build in some ”flexibility” for portions of the proceedings to be public, ”as circumstances may warrant.” He did not say, however, what those circumstances might be.
The judge suggested that the detainees and their lawyers could work with commission lawyer to frame the questions that are ultimately to be asked behind closed doors.
The decision left Barb Jackman, lawyer for Mr. Elmaati, disappointed.
”It looks to me they are doing a secret inquiry. It's not clear that any of it will be public,” she said in an interview. "I don't think it looks like a fair process. My first impression is that it is unfair.” A series of Canadians Arabs whom police believed to be associated with one another fell under investigation after the terrorist attacks against the United States killed 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
No charges were ever laid in Canada, but many of the targets were jailed for lengthy periods in Syria, as much information flowed between Canada, the United States, Syria and Egypt. Ultimately, everyone was let go, and the detainees returned to Canada to allege that they have been wrongly smeared by Canadian officials who orchestrated their arrests overseas when they failed to turn up proof of any crimes in Canada.
Mr. Elmaati was the first suspect to be jailed, and he spent the longest period – more than two years – in custody overseas. During the 1990s Afghan civil war, he and his brother had been involved with mujahedeen fighters there. While Mr. Elmaati returned to Canada to become a long-haul truck driver, his brother, Amer, lingered in Afghanistan and allegedly got involved with al-Qaeda.
By the fall of 2001, Mr. Elmaati was complaining to friends that police in Toronto were driving him crazy with constant surveillance, and he flew to Syria for a wedding.
Jailed upon arriving in Damascus, he was later sent to Cairo for more interrogation. He says he was tortured into making a series of false admissions, including one about a hatching a bomb plot in Ottawa with his brother that may have influenced the investigation back in Canada.
Six months after the initial Syrian arrest, another target of the Canadian investigation was jailed upon arriving there. Ottawa businessman Abdullah Almalki, who during the 1990s had once worked for an Afghan charity and who later exported hundreds of thousands of dollars in communications equipment to the Pakistani military, was under scrutiny in Canada for his export business.
Mr. Almalki also says he was tortured during the initial phases of his two years of detention in Syria. Records now show that the RCMP faxed questions to Syrian military intelligence to be put to the suspect, over the objections of Canadian Foreign Affairs officials who urged the Mounties not to send over the questions.
It is not clear, however, what impact the RCMP questions may have had on Mr. Almalki, who appears to have already suffered his worst mistreatment by the time the document was sent.
Six months after Mr. Almalki was arrested in Syria, border guards in a New York airport arrested Ottawa-based telecommunications engineer Maher Arar, whose case would emerge as an international cause-célèbre. U.S. investigators told Mr. Arar that they had information indicating he was an associate of Mr. Almalki and Mr. Elmaati. For this, he was sent to Syria in shackles on a U.S. government jet and spent nearly a year in custody there.
Geologist Muyyed Nurredin's arrest took place in 2003 and has no known links to the other suspects. He had been a principal at an Islamic school in Scarborough before he travelled to Iraq to visit family in 2003. He was held for a month after crossing into Damascus and was then let go.
In contemplating these cases, Judge Iacobucci will have to contemplate a treasure trove of secret intelligence files, some of which may now be more than a decade old, and which may have been influenced by information from foreign intelligence agencies whose secrets the Canadian government has vowed to guard.
The previous inquiry, in which Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor probed the Maher Arar case, spent two years and millions of dollars probing Canadian involvement. Nominally a public inquiry, it was frequently forced to meet in private because of the government's assertion that it needed to protect its information, to shield both ongoing investigations and foreign sources of information.
Ultimately, Judge O'Connor concluded that inaccurate and misleading information from Canada most likely led the Americans to act as they did against Mr. Arar – who was found to have never represented any risk to Canadian national security. His lawsuit has recently been settled for $10-million in damages.
Judge O'Connor concluded that Mr. Arar's case was intertwined with the others, a finding that led to the new inquiry. He also appointed an academic fact-finder to interview the four Syrian detainees, and concluded that each had been a victim of torture there.
The Attorney-General of Canada and police agencies had been attempting to keep the torture findings out of the new inquiry into the three detainees, arguing that it the report was ”rife with frailties.”
But Judge Iacobucci said he will consider the report's findings with some follow-up investigation.
”It is important to ascertain whether these individuals suffered torture,” the decision released on Thursday said.
Judge Iacobucci said that considering questions behind closed doors should allow for his inquiry move along more speedily than otherwise.
”I am not elevating the workability principle to an unjustifiable degree, but simply recognizing that, for example, to encourage arguments over material that would be presented and whether it could be cleared for release or for redaction proposes and the like, would, as experience in the Arar Inquiry demonstrated, cause significant delay and complexity.”
As well as the national security dodge, we now have the workability dodge, and the time dodge, and the non-trial dodge. However what is clear in spite of all the dodges is that the three will not see the evidence against them or be able to cross examine any of those interviewed--although they can ask questions indirectly. It is not clear what if any information they will receive about the answers or if they can ask further questions. There is really nothing in the mandate that involves assessing the case against the three. It will be interesting to see if the lawyers for the three even think it worth while to continue as part of the inquiry. Politicians should be demanding that the inquiry be expanded and allowed more time. Iacobucci is right, that the inquiry has to work fast to meet the deadline next January.
Even if Iacobucci does in the end come up with a report critical of intelligence services, it is unlikely anything will change or anyone will be held responsible. No one will be held accountable. Even in the Arar case Zaccardelli resigned only due to his own incapacity to absorb his coaching lessons on how to lie successfully.
Three Canadians blocked from hearings into ordeal
COLIN FREEZE
Globe and Mail Update
May 31, 2007 at 12:18 PM EDT
Three Canadian Arabs detained in Syria after Sept. 11, 2001, will be effectively shut out of largely secret hearings meant to determine the level of Canadian involvement in their ordeal, according to a ruling released this morning.
Mr. Justice Frank Iacobucci, who is heading a commission into the mistreatment of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, largely accepts the federal government's pleadings for national-security confidentiality in his new 32-page ruling on how is commission shall proceed.
The commission, which launched this year after the related inquiry into the Maher Arar affair, had been weighing arguments from the former detainees and their lawyers that they be granted access to hearings. Unlike the Arar commission, which was intended to be a publicly inquiry, the new commission was given an explicit mandate to proceed mostly in private.
While Judge Iacobucci entertained arguments for greater transparency, he largely rejected them, ruling that the need for ”workability” of the commission trumped the principle of open courts in this instance.
”The formal hearings conducted as part of this inquiry will be conducted in private, a term that I interpret to mean, in this context, in camera and ex parte,” Judge Iacobucci ruled.
Given the amount of sensitive information involved, he said that ”I do not find it workable or in many ways practical for the counsel for the individuals or the individuals themselves to receive security clearance or be present at all of the inquiries that my counsel or I will be making.
”This would unnecessarily prolong the inquiry and make it unworkable.”
Judge Iacobucci said he will try to build in some ”flexibility” for portions of the proceedings to be public, ”as circumstances may warrant.” He did not say, however, what those circumstances might be.
The judge suggested that the detainees and their lawyers could work with commission lawyer to frame the questions that are ultimately to be asked behind closed doors.
The decision left Barb Jackman, lawyer for Mr. Elmaati, disappointed.
”It looks to me they are doing a secret inquiry. It's not clear that any of it will be public,” she said in an interview. "I don't think it looks like a fair process. My first impression is that it is unfair.” A series of Canadians Arabs whom police believed to be associated with one another fell under investigation after the terrorist attacks against the United States killed 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
No charges were ever laid in Canada, but many of the targets were jailed for lengthy periods in Syria, as much information flowed between Canada, the United States, Syria and Egypt. Ultimately, everyone was let go, and the detainees returned to Canada to allege that they have been wrongly smeared by Canadian officials who orchestrated their arrests overseas when they failed to turn up proof of any crimes in Canada.
Mr. Elmaati was the first suspect to be jailed, and he spent the longest period – more than two years – in custody overseas. During the 1990s Afghan civil war, he and his brother had been involved with mujahedeen fighters there. While Mr. Elmaati returned to Canada to become a long-haul truck driver, his brother, Amer, lingered in Afghanistan and allegedly got involved with al-Qaeda.
By the fall of 2001, Mr. Elmaati was complaining to friends that police in Toronto were driving him crazy with constant surveillance, and he flew to Syria for a wedding.
Jailed upon arriving in Damascus, he was later sent to Cairo for more interrogation. He says he was tortured into making a series of false admissions, including one about a hatching a bomb plot in Ottawa with his brother that may have influenced the investigation back in Canada.
Six months after the initial Syrian arrest, another target of the Canadian investigation was jailed upon arriving there. Ottawa businessman Abdullah Almalki, who during the 1990s had once worked for an Afghan charity and who later exported hundreds of thousands of dollars in communications equipment to the Pakistani military, was under scrutiny in Canada for his export business.
Mr. Almalki also says he was tortured during the initial phases of his two years of detention in Syria. Records now show that the RCMP faxed questions to Syrian military intelligence to be put to the suspect, over the objections of Canadian Foreign Affairs officials who urged the Mounties not to send over the questions.
It is not clear, however, what impact the RCMP questions may have had on Mr. Almalki, who appears to have already suffered his worst mistreatment by the time the document was sent.
Six months after Mr. Almalki was arrested in Syria, border guards in a New York airport arrested Ottawa-based telecommunications engineer Maher Arar, whose case would emerge as an international cause-célèbre. U.S. investigators told Mr. Arar that they had information indicating he was an associate of Mr. Almalki and Mr. Elmaati. For this, he was sent to Syria in shackles on a U.S. government jet and spent nearly a year in custody there.
Geologist Muyyed Nurredin's arrest took place in 2003 and has no known links to the other suspects. He had been a principal at an Islamic school in Scarborough before he travelled to Iraq to visit family in 2003. He was held for a month after crossing into Damascus and was then let go.
In contemplating these cases, Judge Iacobucci will have to contemplate a treasure trove of secret intelligence files, some of which may now be more than a decade old, and which may have been influenced by information from foreign intelligence agencies whose secrets the Canadian government has vowed to guard.
The previous inquiry, in which Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor probed the Maher Arar case, spent two years and millions of dollars probing Canadian involvement. Nominally a public inquiry, it was frequently forced to meet in private because of the government's assertion that it needed to protect its information, to shield both ongoing investigations and foreign sources of information.
Ultimately, Judge O'Connor concluded that inaccurate and misleading information from Canada most likely led the Americans to act as they did against Mr. Arar – who was found to have never represented any risk to Canadian national security. His lawsuit has recently been settled for $10-million in damages.
Judge O'Connor concluded that Mr. Arar's case was intertwined with the others, a finding that led to the new inquiry. He also appointed an academic fact-finder to interview the four Syrian detainees, and concluded that each had been a victim of torture there.
The Attorney-General of Canada and police agencies had been attempting to keep the torture findings out of the new inquiry into the three detainees, arguing that it the report was ”rife with frailties.”
But Judge Iacobucci said he will consider the report's findings with some follow-up investigation.
”It is important to ascertain whether these individuals suffered torture,” the decision released on Thursday said.
Judge Iacobucci said that considering questions behind closed doors should allow for his inquiry move along more speedily than otherwise.
”I am not elevating the workability principle to an unjustifiable degree, but simply recognizing that, for example, to encourage arguments over material that would be presented and whether it could be cleared for release or for redaction proposes and the like, would, as experience in the Arar Inquiry demonstrated, cause significant delay and complexity.”
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Iacobucci Inquiry
If I were the lawyers for the three I would seriously consider not participating in the inquiry at all. There is no chance for them to question or even see most of the evidence that will be brought forth by the intelligence agencies. As Iacobucci notes in his rulings, he sees the inquiry as primarily inquisitorial not one where lawyers are in a combatorial role. There are no sides apparently but just the GRAND INQUISITOR Iacobucci from Torys LLP and TorStar impartially uncovering the TRUTH.
The whole of Iacobucci's decision is available in PDF format at the inquiry website.
Torture probe lawyers barred from hearings
May 31, 2007 08:12 PM
Jim Bronskill
canadian press
OTTAWA – Lawyers for three Canadians accused of terrorist ties will not be privy to closed-door hearings into their clients' arrest and imprisonment abroad.
The idea of giving special security clearances to counsel was rejected Thursday by former Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci, who has been appointed to examine the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.
The three men claim flawed intelligence from the RCMP and CSIS led to their torture in Syria and Egypt as terrorism suspects.
In a key ruling on how the inquiry will unfold, Iacobucci said he could not see how providing the lawyers with security-cleared access would be helpful to their clients or the inquiry.
He concluded that given the extraordinary sensitivity of the matters under discussion, the lawyers would effectively be forbidden from discussing anything about the hearings with the three men.
"Even something as innocuous as a request for a document or for clarification of a fact could trigger questions from colleagues and clients that might result in disclosure of information subject to national security confidentiality," Iacobucci said in his decision.
The government argued at an April hearing that nearly all future proceedings should be held behind closed doors – not just to protect national security but also to speed up the investigation.
An earlier inquiry into the case of Maher Arar, an Ottawa engineer tortured in a Syrian prison, repeatedly became bogged down in squabbling over how much information could be made public.
In his ruling Thursday, Iacobucci said he will be "continually sensitive to having public hearings when they can be held."
However, he clearly indicated most of the inquiry will be held behind closed doors, believing that to be consistent with both the original terms of reference for the probe outlined by the government and the federal Inquiries Act.
"In my view, there is nothing in the Act to prevent a public inquiry being held in part or all in private."
Jasminka Kalajdzic, a lawyer for Almalki, expressed disappointment.
"We don't believe that the terms of reference absolutely required that the bulk of the work of the inquiry be conducted in secret," she said.
"We do have concerns about the extent to which the public can have confidence in the secret process, especially when the issue is torture – one which we think all Canadians have an interest in being dealt with openly and publicly."
Kalajdzic said counsel for the men would weigh Iacobucci's ruling before deciding how to proceed: "We're discussing our options with our clients, and we'll have to make a decision very soon about that."
Ottawa awarded Arar $10.5 million in compensation after an inquiry concluded faulty information passed by the RCMP to American officials likely led to his deportation to Syria.
In light of similarities to Arar's ordeal, advocates for Almalki, El Maati and Nureddin want to know whether Ottawa orchestrated their overseas interrogations in co-operation with foreign allies.
El Maati, a Toronto truck driver, was arrested in Syria on a visit in 2001, then sent to Egypt in early 2002. He was imprisoned there for almost two years.
Almalki, an Ottawa electronics engineer, was detained in Syria in 2002 and held for 22 months.
Nureddin, a Toronto geologist, was held for 34 days in Syria in late 2003 and early 2004.
Iacobucci said the inquiry would take a broad look at how the men were treated to determine the role played by Canadian officials. That will include further inquiry into claims the men were tortured, building on an independent fact-finding report carried out for the Arar inquiry.
Iacobucci said he has asked inquiry counsel to consult with lawyers for the three "concerning the most appropriate means of inquiring into the allegations of torture."
Next month the inquiry plans to begin interviewing current and former officials from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and Foreign Affairs.
The whole of Iacobucci's decision is available in PDF format at the inquiry website.
Torture probe lawyers barred from hearings
May 31, 2007 08:12 PM
Jim Bronskill
canadian press
OTTAWA – Lawyers for three Canadians accused of terrorist ties will not be privy to closed-door hearings into their clients' arrest and imprisonment abroad.
The idea of giving special security clearances to counsel was rejected Thursday by former Supreme Court judge Frank Iacobucci, who has been appointed to examine the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.
The three men claim flawed intelligence from the RCMP and CSIS led to their torture in Syria and Egypt as terrorism suspects.
In a key ruling on how the inquiry will unfold, Iacobucci said he could not see how providing the lawyers with security-cleared access would be helpful to their clients or the inquiry.
He concluded that given the extraordinary sensitivity of the matters under discussion, the lawyers would effectively be forbidden from discussing anything about the hearings with the three men.
"Even something as innocuous as a request for a document or for clarification of a fact could trigger questions from colleagues and clients that might result in disclosure of information subject to national security confidentiality," Iacobucci said in his decision.
The government argued at an April hearing that nearly all future proceedings should be held behind closed doors – not just to protect national security but also to speed up the investigation.
An earlier inquiry into the case of Maher Arar, an Ottawa engineer tortured in a Syrian prison, repeatedly became bogged down in squabbling over how much information could be made public.
In his ruling Thursday, Iacobucci said he will be "continually sensitive to having public hearings when they can be held."
However, he clearly indicated most of the inquiry will be held behind closed doors, believing that to be consistent with both the original terms of reference for the probe outlined by the government and the federal Inquiries Act.
"In my view, there is nothing in the Act to prevent a public inquiry being held in part or all in private."
Jasminka Kalajdzic, a lawyer for Almalki, expressed disappointment.
"We don't believe that the terms of reference absolutely required that the bulk of the work of the inquiry be conducted in secret," she said.
"We do have concerns about the extent to which the public can have confidence in the secret process, especially when the issue is torture – one which we think all Canadians have an interest in being dealt with openly and publicly."
Kalajdzic said counsel for the men would weigh Iacobucci's ruling before deciding how to proceed: "We're discussing our options with our clients, and we'll have to make a decision very soon about that."
Ottawa awarded Arar $10.5 million in compensation after an inquiry concluded faulty information passed by the RCMP to American officials likely led to his deportation to Syria.
In light of similarities to Arar's ordeal, advocates for Almalki, El Maati and Nureddin want to know whether Ottawa orchestrated their overseas interrogations in co-operation with foreign allies.
El Maati, a Toronto truck driver, was arrested in Syria on a visit in 2001, then sent to Egypt in early 2002. He was imprisoned there for almost two years.
Almalki, an Ottawa electronics engineer, was detained in Syria in 2002 and held for 22 months.
Nureddin, a Toronto geologist, was held for 34 days in Syria in late 2003 and early 2004.
Iacobucci said the inquiry would take a broad look at how the men were treated to determine the role played by Canadian officials. That will include further inquiry into claims the men were tortured, building on an independent fact-finding report carried out for the Arar inquiry.
Iacobucci said he has asked inquiry counsel to consult with lawyers for the three "concerning the most appropriate means of inquiring into the allegations of torture."
Next month the inquiry plans to begin interviewing current and former officials from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and Foreign Affairs.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Iacobucci Inquiry: The Right to View Evidence
Full story is here.
Fairness is contextual. This means I presume that in the context of his inquiry fairness might not involve access to the evidence against the three! Way to go Frank!
If the lawyers cannot be at these hearings it makes sense for them to simply walk out. Perhaps there is some compromise possible in that some of the evidence might be available. The Tory LLP people in negotiation with the govt. could perhaps work out something. Otherwise the whole process has zilch credibility.
The terms do allow Iacobucci to conduct some public hearings if he considers them "essential" to his work, and he signalled Monday that he will take advantage of the opportunity.
"I intend to take that provision most seriously," he declared.
But commission counsel John Laskin said it's premature to speculate on exactly how much of the evidence will be available to the media and the general public. He also dodged the question of whether the three complainants and their lawyers will have access to closed-door sessions.
The issue is reminiscent of the debate over federal security certificates, the legal vehicles used by Ottawa to deport non-citizens suspected of terrorist activity.
In a landmark ruling last month, the Supreme Court struck down the system because it relied on judges hearing key evidence in private, with neither the defendants nor their lawyers present.
Laskin suggested, however, that the procedural rules deemed essential for a court case may not apply at a commission of inquiry.
"The Supreme Court has said many, many, many times fairness is contextual," he told reporters. "And the context here is a different context."
The matter won't be resolved until another hearing is held in mid-April.
Jasminka Kalajdzic, one of the lawyers for Almalki, said security-cleared counsel for the complainants must have access to closed-door proceedings.
Almalki seconded that opinion during a break in the hearing Monday, saying he needs to know the evidence against him to clear his name.
He added that he's looking to the inquiry to finally get to the truth of what happened to him - and to hold those responsible accountable.
"I don't think we can afford (to have) people in our government who are complicit in torture stay in their positions."
Nureddin, who attended the hearing, declined to speak about his case.
El Maati was absent because he's just undergone back surgery - the latest of seven operations to repair injuries suffered at the hands of his foreign jailers.
El Maati, a Toronto truck driver, was arrested in Syria on a visit in 2001, then transferred to Egypt in early 2002 for further interrogation.
Almalki, an Ottawa electronics engineer, was detained in Syria in 2002 and held for 22 months, while Nureddin, a Toronto geologist, was held for 34 days in Syria.
Their stories bear striking similarities to that of Maher Arar, who was arrested by U.S. authorities in 2002 and deported to face torture in Syria. Arar's name was cleared by another inquiry that concluded he was the victim of misinformation supplied by the RCMP.
Fairness is contextual. This means I presume that in the context of his inquiry fairness might not involve access to the evidence against the three! Way to go Frank!
If the lawyers cannot be at these hearings it makes sense for them to simply walk out. Perhaps there is some compromise possible in that some of the evidence might be available. The Tory LLP people in negotiation with the govt. could perhaps work out something. Otherwise the whole process has zilch credibility.
The terms do allow Iacobucci to conduct some public hearings if he considers them "essential" to his work, and he signalled Monday that he will take advantage of the opportunity.
"I intend to take that provision most seriously," he declared.
But commission counsel John Laskin said it's premature to speculate on exactly how much of the evidence will be available to the media and the general public. He also dodged the question of whether the three complainants and their lawyers will have access to closed-door sessions.
The issue is reminiscent of the debate over federal security certificates, the legal vehicles used by Ottawa to deport non-citizens suspected of terrorist activity.
In a landmark ruling last month, the Supreme Court struck down the system because it relied on judges hearing key evidence in private, with neither the defendants nor their lawyers present.
Laskin suggested, however, that the procedural rules deemed essential for a court case may not apply at a commission of inquiry.
"The Supreme Court has said many, many, many times fairness is contextual," he told reporters. "And the context here is a different context."
The matter won't be resolved until another hearing is held in mid-April.
Jasminka Kalajdzic, one of the lawyers for Almalki, said security-cleared counsel for the complainants must have access to closed-door proceedings.
Almalki seconded that opinion during a break in the hearing Monday, saying he needs to know the evidence against him to clear his name.
He added that he's looking to the inquiry to finally get to the truth of what happened to him - and to hold those responsible accountable.
"I don't think we can afford (to have) people in our government who are complicit in torture stay in their positions."
Nureddin, who attended the hearing, declined to speak about his case.
El Maati was absent because he's just undergone back surgery - the latest of seven operations to repair injuries suffered at the hands of his foreign jailers.
El Maati, a Toronto truck driver, was arrested in Syria on a visit in 2001, then transferred to Egypt in early 2002 for further interrogation.
Almalki, an Ottawa electronics engineer, was detained in Syria in 2002 and held for 22 months, while Nureddin, a Toronto geologist, was held for 34 days in Syria.
Their stories bear striking similarities to that of Maher Arar, who was arrested by U.S. authorities in 2002 and deported to face torture in Syria. Arar's name was cleared by another inquiry that concluded he was the victim of misinformation supplied by the RCMP.
Iacobucci Inquiry: The Process
If the lawyers for the three complainants cannot view the evidence what is the point in their even being there? This is what worries me about an inquiry that involves evidence that will be routinely be classified and as not in the public interest to reveal. How could one hope to have confidence in this process even if Iacobucci does find failings in the intelligence services? There still has been not a single person held responsible for the Arar case. In fact several people involved were promoted. Zaccardelli had to resign because of his perjury not because of the RCMP wrongdoings or errors as in officalspeak.
Inquiry into torture of three Canadians to be mostly private: judge Canadian Press
Published: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Article tools
OTTAWA (CP) - Former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci is promising to get to the bottom of the role played by the RCMP and CSIS in the arrest and torture abroad of three Canadians accused of terrorist ties - but the public may never see most of the evidence.
In an opening statement Monday, Iacobucci acknowledged that the bulk of his work will be carried out behind closed doors for national security reasons. He expressed hope, however, that the secrecy won't undermine public confidence in the proceedings.
"Having been a judge for some 17 years, I have a profound respect for the principles of independence and acting in the public interest," he said.
He went on to offer an assurance that he will be "as vigilant as I can to ensure that the inquiry is as independent, thorough and fair as it can possibly be under the circumstances."
Iacobucci also noted the terms of reference handed to him by the Conservative government do allow for some public hearings if he considers them "essential" to carry out his mandate.
"I intend to take that provision most seriously," he said.
Commission counsel John Laskin said it's premature to speculate about how much of the evidence will be available to the media and the general public.
He also declined to offer an opinion on whether security-cleared lawyers for the three complainants will be allowed to sit in on closed-door sessions dealing with sensitive documents and testimony. That issue will likely be hashed out at another hearing scheduled for mid-April
Iacobucci was appointed last December to investigate the ordeals of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, all of whom deny allegations of terrorist links.
They say their detention and torture in Syria and Egypt resulted from misleading information supplied to foreign officials by Canadian police and security officers.
© The Canadian Press 2007
Inquiry into torture of three Canadians to be mostly private: judge Canadian Press
Published: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Article tools
OTTAWA (CP) - Former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci is promising to get to the bottom of the role played by the RCMP and CSIS in the arrest and torture abroad of three Canadians accused of terrorist ties - but the public may never see most of the evidence.
In an opening statement Monday, Iacobucci acknowledged that the bulk of his work will be carried out behind closed doors for national security reasons. He expressed hope, however, that the secrecy won't undermine public confidence in the proceedings.
"Having been a judge for some 17 years, I have a profound respect for the principles of independence and acting in the public interest," he said.
He went on to offer an assurance that he will be "as vigilant as I can to ensure that the inquiry is as independent, thorough and fair as it can possibly be under the circumstances."
Iacobucci also noted the terms of reference handed to him by the Conservative government do allow for some public hearings if he considers them "essential" to carry out his mandate.
"I intend to take that provision most seriously," he said.
Commission counsel John Laskin said it's premature to speculate about how much of the evidence will be available to the media and the general public.
He also declined to offer an opinion on whether security-cleared lawyers for the three complainants will be allowed to sit in on closed-door sessions dealing with sensitive documents and testimony. That issue will likely be hashed out at another hearing scheduled for mid-April
Iacobucci was appointed last December to investigate the ordeals of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, all of whom deny allegations of terrorist links.
They say their detention and torture in Syria and Egypt resulted from misleading information supplied to foreign officials by Canadian police and security officers.
© The Canadian Press 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
Iacobucci Inquiry to begin.
It remains to be seen how much the public will be allowed to see of the evidence against the three. From the nature of the inquiry it seems unlikely that there will be all that much done in public. The lawyers for the three may not even see much of the evidence on national security grounds. This often means that it would be counter to national security to reveal the incompetence of our intelligence persons.
Inquiry into torture of three Cdns. to begin
Updated Sun. Mar. 18 2007 2:16 PM ET
Canadian Press
OTTAWA -- Canadians will finally get a glimpse of how former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci plans to proceed in his investigation into the detention and torture abroad of three Canadians accused of terrorist ties.
It can't come soon enough for supporters of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmed El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, all of whom believe the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP played a part in their mistreatment in Syria and Egypt.
Their stories bear striking similarities to the more highly publicized ordeal of Maher Arar -- prompting charges by human rights groups that Ottawa is deliberately farming out the interrogation of suspects to regimes with a history of abusing prisoners.
Iacobucci was appointed in December to probe the actions of CSIS, the Mounties and the Foreign Affairs Department, under a mandate conferred by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.
The official business at the first public session of the inquiry Wednesday will be to hear submissions from lawyers for the three men, along with any other interested parties who want a voice in the investigation.
More revealing, however, may be the opening statement by Iacobucci, who's expected to outline how he plans to sort out the affair, how long it will take, and how he hopes to preserve the credibility of a process that will take place mostly behind closed doors.
"He's determined that this will be an independent inquiry, the results of which will make the public confident that he's gotten to the bottom of it,'' says John Laskin, the chief counsel for the commission.
"We're very much committed to doing something credible and fair and thorough.''
But it appears the public may have to take Iacobucci's word for that, since much of the documentation and oral testimony will be dealt with in private for national security reasons.
The inquiry's terms of reference do allow the judge to hold public sessions if he deems them "essential'' to carry out his mandate. But Laskin admits most of the work will be "presumptively private,'' and that worries counsel for the three complainants.
"The question is, will we actually get to see any of the evidence and test some of it,'' says Paul Copeland, the lawyer for Almalki.
"They've spent at least nine years now investigating Mr. Almalki, first CSIS and then the RCMP. No charges were ever laid (but) they labelled him, in a variety of the investigations, as high-level al-Qaida. They have branded him in a way that's terrible.''
Almalki, an Ottawa electronics engineer, was first interviewed by CSIS in 1998 and had his file turned over to the RCMP following the 9/11 attacks in the United States in the fall of 2001. He's had his house searched and been targeted for wiretaps and electronic surveillance.
The original interest by CSIS related to communications equipment allegedly shipped by Almalki's export firm to Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan. He says the equipment was intended for sale to the Pakistani military.
Almalki was also of interest to investigators because he once worked for a charitable organization run by Omar Said Khadr, a Canadian citizen identified, before his death in a shootout with Pakistani troops, as a key aide to al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden. Almalki says he didn't like Khadr and quit the charity after a short stint.
Nevertheless, he became the main target of an RCMP counter-terrorist investigation known as Project A-O Canada -- the same operation that fingered fellow Ottawa resident Maher Arar, who was subsequently arrested by U.S. authorities and deported to face torture in Syria.
Arar's name was cleared last year by another inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor, who found he was the victim of misleading information passed to the Americans by the Mounties.
Almalki was arrested by Syrian authorities on a visit to Damascus in 2002 just a few months before Arar's imprisonment. He says he was tortured repeatedly during his 20 months in jail, only to be released without charge in the end.
El Maati, a Toronto truck driver, was also a target of both CSIS and the RCMP for several years before his arrest on a trip to Syria in late 2001. He was later transferred to Egypt and says he was tortured in both countries -- at one point signing a false confession of a non-existent plot to attack the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.
El Maati, who like Almalki was eventually freed without charge and returned to Canada, has admitted he was once an ambulance driver for Afghan insurgents, but that was during Soviet occupation of the country.
His brother Amer has been identified by U.S. authorities as an al-Qaida operative suspected of plotting a plane hijacking that never materialized. El Maati says he hasn't seen his brother in years, and the rest of the family in Toronto has also lost contact with him.
Nureddin, a Toronto geologist, spent 34 days in custody in Damascus in December 2001 and January 2002 after being arrested as he crossed the border from Iraq to Syria.
He had been the principal of an Islamic school in Toronto that was under CSIS surveillance, and had been questioned by the security service before leaving Canada. He says he was asked the same kind of questions -- under torture -- during his captivity in Damascus.
His lawyer, Barbara Jackman, who also represents El Maati, says she's mystified about why Canadian investigators were so interested in Nureddin, especially since their questions to him mainly focused on what he knew about others, not on his own activities.
"In some ways it's one of the most egregious cases,''Jackman said when the inquiry was called. "There doesn't appear to be any real justification for any concern about him.''
Inquiry into torture of three Cdns. to begin
Updated Sun. Mar. 18 2007 2:16 PM ET
Canadian Press
OTTAWA -- Canadians will finally get a glimpse of how former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci plans to proceed in his investigation into the detention and torture abroad of three Canadians accused of terrorist ties.
It can't come soon enough for supporters of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmed El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, all of whom believe the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP played a part in their mistreatment in Syria and Egypt.
Their stories bear striking similarities to the more highly publicized ordeal of Maher Arar -- prompting charges by human rights groups that Ottawa is deliberately farming out the interrogation of suspects to regimes with a history of abusing prisoners.
Iacobucci was appointed in December to probe the actions of CSIS, the Mounties and the Foreign Affairs Department, under a mandate conferred by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.
The official business at the first public session of the inquiry Wednesday will be to hear submissions from lawyers for the three men, along with any other interested parties who want a voice in the investigation.
More revealing, however, may be the opening statement by Iacobucci, who's expected to outline how he plans to sort out the affair, how long it will take, and how he hopes to preserve the credibility of a process that will take place mostly behind closed doors.
"He's determined that this will be an independent inquiry, the results of which will make the public confident that he's gotten to the bottom of it,'' says John Laskin, the chief counsel for the commission.
"We're very much committed to doing something credible and fair and thorough.''
But it appears the public may have to take Iacobucci's word for that, since much of the documentation and oral testimony will be dealt with in private for national security reasons.
The inquiry's terms of reference do allow the judge to hold public sessions if he deems them "essential'' to carry out his mandate. But Laskin admits most of the work will be "presumptively private,'' and that worries counsel for the three complainants.
"The question is, will we actually get to see any of the evidence and test some of it,'' says Paul Copeland, the lawyer for Almalki.
"They've spent at least nine years now investigating Mr. Almalki, first CSIS and then the RCMP. No charges were ever laid (but) they labelled him, in a variety of the investigations, as high-level al-Qaida. They have branded him in a way that's terrible.''
Almalki, an Ottawa electronics engineer, was first interviewed by CSIS in 1998 and had his file turned over to the RCMP following the 9/11 attacks in the United States in the fall of 2001. He's had his house searched and been targeted for wiretaps and electronic surveillance.
The original interest by CSIS related to communications equipment allegedly shipped by Almalki's export firm to Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan. He says the equipment was intended for sale to the Pakistani military.
Almalki was also of interest to investigators because he once worked for a charitable organization run by Omar Said Khadr, a Canadian citizen identified, before his death in a shootout with Pakistani troops, as a key aide to al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden. Almalki says he didn't like Khadr and quit the charity after a short stint.
Nevertheless, he became the main target of an RCMP counter-terrorist investigation known as Project A-O Canada -- the same operation that fingered fellow Ottawa resident Maher Arar, who was subsequently arrested by U.S. authorities and deported to face torture in Syria.
Arar's name was cleared last year by another inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor, who found he was the victim of misleading information passed to the Americans by the Mounties.
Almalki was arrested by Syrian authorities on a visit to Damascus in 2002 just a few months before Arar's imprisonment. He says he was tortured repeatedly during his 20 months in jail, only to be released without charge in the end.
El Maati, a Toronto truck driver, was also a target of both CSIS and the RCMP for several years before his arrest on a trip to Syria in late 2001. He was later transferred to Egypt and says he was tortured in both countries -- at one point signing a false confession of a non-existent plot to attack the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.
El Maati, who like Almalki was eventually freed without charge and returned to Canada, has admitted he was once an ambulance driver for Afghan insurgents, but that was during Soviet occupation of the country.
His brother Amer has been identified by U.S. authorities as an al-Qaida operative suspected of plotting a plane hijacking that never materialized. El Maati says he hasn't seen his brother in years, and the rest of the family in Toronto has also lost contact with him.
Nureddin, a Toronto geologist, spent 34 days in custody in Damascus in December 2001 and January 2002 after being arrested as he crossed the border from Iraq to Syria.
He had been the principal of an Islamic school in Toronto that was under CSIS surveillance, and had been questioned by the security service before leaving Canada. He says he was asked the same kind of questions -- under torture -- during his captivity in Damascus.
His lawyer, Barbara Jackman, who also represents El Maati, says she's mystified about why Canadian investigators were so interested in Nureddin, especially since their questions to him mainly focused on what he knew about others, not on his own activities.
"In some ways it's one of the most egregious cases,''Jackman said when the inquiry was called. "There doesn't appear to be any real justification for any concern about him.''
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Iacobucci Inquiry Website
There is website set up for the Iacobucci Inquiry. It is here.
Here are the terms of reference:
About the Inquiry
The Internal Inquiry was established on December 11, 2006 under Part I of the Inquiries Act on the recommendation of the Minister of Public Safety. The Honourable Frank Iacobucci has been appointed Commissioner. In that capacity, the Commissioner has all the powers set out in the Act, including the authority to hold hearings, summon witnesses and gather evidence needed to conduct the Inquiry.
As Commissioner of the Inquiry, Mr. Iacobucci’s mandate will be to determine:
whether the detention of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin in Syria or Egypt resulted, directly or indirectly, from actions of Canadian officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign countries and, if so, whether those actions were deficient in the circumstances,
whether there were deficiencies in the actions taken by Canadian officials to provide consular services to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin while they were detained in Syria or Egypt, and
whether any mistreatment of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin in Syria or Egypt resulted, directly or indirectly, from actions of Canadian officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign countries and, if so, whether those actions were deficient in the circumstances;
This Inquiry is expected to deal with sensitive national security matters. While public hearings are possible, it is likely the Inquiry will be carried out largely in private.
The report resulting from the Inquiry is to be submitted to the Government by January 31, 2008.
Here are the terms of reference:
About the Inquiry
The Internal Inquiry was established on December 11, 2006 under Part I of the Inquiries Act on the recommendation of the Minister of Public Safety. The Honourable Frank Iacobucci has been appointed Commissioner. In that capacity, the Commissioner has all the powers set out in the Act, including the authority to hold hearings, summon witnesses and gather evidence needed to conduct the Inquiry.
As Commissioner of the Inquiry, Mr. Iacobucci’s mandate will be to determine:
whether the detention of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin in Syria or Egypt resulted, directly or indirectly, from actions of Canadian officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign countries and, if so, whether those actions were deficient in the circumstances,
whether there were deficiencies in the actions taken by Canadian officials to provide consular services to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin while they were detained in Syria or Egypt, and
whether any mistreatment of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin in Syria or Egypt resulted, directly or indirectly, from actions of Canadian officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign countries and, if so, whether those actions were deficient in the circumstances;
This Inquiry is expected to deal with sensitive national security matters. While public hearings are possible, it is likely the Inquiry will be carried out largely in private.
The report resulting from the Inquiry is to be submitted to the Government by January 31, 2008.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
More on the Iacobucci Inquiry
Finally a little more information on this inquiry. I sent an email to Stockwell Day on January 11th and several followups but have had not answer as to when the inquiry will begin or if there will be a website. The Liberal and NDP justice critics have not responded either. The only responses have been from the office of my own MP but neither of those answered the questions. Why have these email addresses if no one answers queries?
Attention News Editors:
Commissioner Frank Iacobucci appoints staff
OTTAWA, Feb. 16 /CNW Telbec/ - The Honourable Frank Iacobucci, who has
been appointed as Commissioner to conduct the Internal Inquiry into the
Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad
Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, is pleased to announce the appointment of
certain senior members of the Inquiry's legal and administrative staff.
Mr. John B. Laskin will act as Lead Counsel. Admitted to the Bar in 1979,
Mr. Laskin is a senior partner at Torys LLP in Toronto, where he maintains a
wide-ranging litigation practice.
Mr. John A. Terry is appointed Co-Lead Counsel. Also a litigation partner
at Torys LLP, Mr. Terry's main areas of practice include international, public
and business law. He was called to the Bar in 1991.
Ms. Danielle Barot is appointed Counsel with primary responsibility for
managing the Inquiry's documentary evidence. Ms. Barot is a specialist in
criminal law and a partner at Schurman Longo Grenier in Montreal. She was
admitted to the Bar in 1971.
Ms. Nicole Viau-Cheney is appointed Director, Finance and Administration.
In that capacity, Ms. Viau-Cheney will be responsible for all administrative
and financial aspects of the Commission. She brings to the Inquiry the
experience of having served with several Commissions of Inquiry over the
years.
Ms. Francine Bastien will be responsible for Communications and Media
Relations. A native Montrealer and former Radio-Canada/CBC radio and
television journalist, Ms. Bastien served in a similar capacity with the Arar
Commission.
The Commissioner expects to make further appointments as the work of the
Inquiry proceeds.
The Commission expects to convene initial hearings shortly to deal with
certain preliminary matters, including applications for participation in the
Inquiry.
Established under Part I of the Inquiries Act by the Minister of Public
Safety, the Commissioner's mandate is to determine whether the detention of
these three individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from actions of Canadian
officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign
countries; those actions or the actions of Canadian consular officials were
deficient in these cases and whether any mistreatment of these three
individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from deficiencies in the actions of
Canadian officials.
For further information: Media contact: Francine Bastien, (613)
947-7606, Cell.: (613) 299-6554, fbastien@bellnet.ca
Attention News Editors:
Commissioner Frank Iacobucci appoints staff
OTTAWA, Feb. 16 /CNW Telbec/ - The Honourable Frank Iacobucci, who has
been appointed as Commissioner to conduct the Internal Inquiry into the
Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad
Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, is pleased to announce the appointment of
certain senior members of the Inquiry's legal and administrative staff.
Mr. John B. Laskin will act as Lead Counsel. Admitted to the Bar in 1979,
Mr. Laskin is a senior partner at Torys LLP in Toronto, where he maintains a
wide-ranging litigation practice.
Mr. John A. Terry is appointed Co-Lead Counsel. Also a litigation partner
at Torys LLP, Mr. Terry's main areas of practice include international, public
and business law. He was called to the Bar in 1991.
Ms. Danielle Barot is appointed Counsel with primary responsibility for
managing the Inquiry's documentary evidence. Ms. Barot is a specialist in
criminal law and a partner at Schurman Longo Grenier in Montreal. She was
admitted to the Bar in 1971.
Ms. Nicole Viau-Cheney is appointed Director, Finance and Administration.
In that capacity, Ms. Viau-Cheney will be responsible for all administrative
and financial aspects of the Commission. She brings to the Inquiry the
experience of having served with several Commissions of Inquiry over the
years.
Ms. Francine Bastien will be responsible for Communications and Media
Relations. A native Montrealer and former Radio-Canada/CBC radio and
television journalist, Ms. Bastien served in a similar capacity with the Arar
Commission.
The Commissioner expects to make further appointments as the work of the
Inquiry proceeds.
The Commission expects to convene initial hearings shortly to deal with
certain preliminary matters, including applications for participation in the
Inquiry.
Established under Part I of the Inquiries Act by the Minister of Public
Safety, the Commissioner's mandate is to determine whether the detention of
these three individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from actions of Canadian
officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign
countries; those actions or the actions of Canadian consular officials were
deficient in these cases and whether any mistreatment of these three
individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from deficiencies in the actions of
Canadian officials.
For further information: Media contact: Francine Bastien, (613)
947-7606, Cell.: (613) 299-6554, fbastien@bellnet.ca
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Iacobucci Inquiry appoints members
I have sent emails to Day's office since January 11 with several followups including to NDP and Liberal justice critics. Only my own MP has responded and his office has never answered my questions. I asked when the inquiry would begin and if there would be a website as in the O'Connor inquiry. No answer is yet forthcoming. I wonder if the name of one of the legal firms Torys is any significance LOL
Attention News Editors:
Commissioner Frank Iacobucci appoints staff
OTTAWA, Feb. 16 /CNW Telbec/ - The Honourable Frank Iacobucci, who has
been appointed as Commissioner to conduct the Internal Inquiry into the
Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad
Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, is pleased to announce the appointment of
certain senior members of the Inquiry's legal and administrative staff.
Mr. John B. Laskin will act as Lead Counsel. Admitted to the Bar in 1979,
Mr. Laskin is a senior partner at Torys LLP in Toronto, where he maintains a
wide-ranging litigation practice.
Mr. John A. Terry is appointed Co-Lead Counsel. Also a litigation partner
at Torys LLP, Mr. Terry's main areas of practice include international, public
and business law. He was called to the Bar in 1991.
Ms. Danielle Barot is appointed Counsel with primary responsibility for
managing the Inquiry's documentary evidence. Ms. Barot is a specialist in
criminal law and a partner at Schurman Longo Grenier in Montreal. She was
admitted to the Bar in 1971.
Ms. Nicole Viau-Cheney is appointed Director, Finance and Administration.
In that capacity, Ms. Viau-Cheney will be responsible for all administrative
and financial aspects of the Commission. She brings to the Inquiry the
experience of having served with several Commissions of Inquiry over the
years.
Ms. Francine Bastien will be responsible for Communications and Media
Relations. A native Montrealer and former Radio-Canada/CBC radio and
television journalist, Ms. Bastien served in a similar capacity with the Arar
Commission.
The Commissioner expects to make further appointments as the work of the
Inquiry proceeds.
The Commission expects to convene initial hearings shortly to deal with
certain preliminary matters, including applications for participation in the
Inquiry.
Established under Part I of the Inquiries Act by the Minister of Public
Safety, the Commissioner's mandate is to determine whether the detention of
these three individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from actions of Canadian
officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign
countries; those actions or the actions of Canadian consular officials were
deficient in these cases and whether any mistreatment of these three
individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from deficiencies in the actions of
Canadian officials.
For further information: Media contact: Francine Bastien, (613)
947-7606, Cell.: (613) 299-6554, fbastien@bellnet.ca
Attention News Editors:
Commissioner Frank Iacobucci appoints staff
OTTAWA, Feb. 16 /CNW Telbec/ - The Honourable Frank Iacobucci, who has
been appointed as Commissioner to conduct the Internal Inquiry into the
Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad
Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, is pleased to announce the appointment of
certain senior members of the Inquiry's legal and administrative staff.
Mr. John B. Laskin will act as Lead Counsel. Admitted to the Bar in 1979,
Mr. Laskin is a senior partner at Torys LLP in Toronto, where he maintains a
wide-ranging litigation practice.
Mr. John A. Terry is appointed Co-Lead Counsel. Also a litigation partner
at Torys LLP, Mr. Terry's main areas of practice include international, public
and business law. He was called to the Bar in 1991.
Ms. Danielle Barot is appointed Counsel with primary responsibility for
managing the Inquiry's documentary evidence. Ms. Barot is a specialist in
criminal law and a partner at Schurman Longo Grenier in Montreal. She was
admitted to the Bar in 1971.
Ms. Nicole Viau-Cheney is appointed Director, Finance and Administration.
In that capacity, Ms. Viau-Cheney will be responsible for all administrative
and financial aspects of the Commission. She brings to the Inquiry the
experience of having served with several Commissions of Inquiry over the
years.
Ms. Francine Bastien will be responsible for Communications and Media
Relations. A native Montrealer and former Radio-Canada/CBC radio and
television journalist, Ms. Bastien served in a similar capacity with the Arar
Commission.
The Commissioner expects to make further appointments as the work of the
Inquiry proceeds.
The Commission expects to convene initial hearings shortly to deal with
certain preliminary matters, including applications for participation in the
Inquiry.
Established under Part I of the Inquiries Act by the Minister of Public
Safety, the Commissioner's mandate is to determine whether the detention of
these three individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from actions of Canadian
officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign
countries; those actions or the actions of Canadian consular officials were
deficient in these cases and whether any mistreatment of these three
individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from deficiencies in the actions of
Canadian officials.
For further information: Media contact: Francine Bastien, (613)
947-7606, Cell.: (613) 299-6554, fbastien@bellnet.ca
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