A commission investigating Canada’s role in the detention of three Arab-Canadians who say they were tortured in Syria has been so secretive that the men were denied due process, Amnesty International said on Monday.
Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International’s Canadian chapter, said the federal government’s closed-door inquiry into torture allegations made by Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, cannot be considered fair or just.
“This is an inquiry that has extended secrecy to everything, not just the national security concerns. We’re used to private legal proceedings when national security is at stake. But here it went too far, excluding the suspects and public from the proceedings in their entirety,” Neve said from his office in Ottawa.
A report on the inquiry’s findings was released to the Privy Council Office, which advises the prime minister, on Monday, but it was not clear when the government would make the findings public.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper named former Canadian Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci in December to investigate allegations by Almalki, El Maati and Nureddin that they were tortured in Syria after traveling there separately on personal business between 2001 to 2003. None has been charged with a crime.
The three say they believe the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or intelligence officials tipped off foreign intelligence agencies about their travel plans to the Middle East and provided questions to their captors. The men want to know whether the Canadian government orchestrated their overseas interrogations in cooperation with foreign allies.
The commission’s probe was carried out almost entirely out of the public eye, which means that the men and their lawyers have had no chance to see evidence filed in the proceedings or to attend hearings and interviews with Canadian officials. Lawyers were allowed to see and file responses to a draft narrative of facts compiled by the commission, but were forbidden to share the information with their clients.
“How can we trust the findings of an inquiry that has heard only one side of the story?” asked El Maati, who was arrested in November 2001 when he flew to Syria to celebrate his wedding.
John Laskin, chief counsel for the inquiry, said last week the terms of reference drawn up by the government left Iacobucci no choice but to hear most of the evidence in private for national security reasons.
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