Andrew Duffy (Ottawa Citizen) – A federal inquiry has found that Canadian officials bear some responsibility for the torture suffered by three Canadian citizens who were imprisoned in Syria and Egypt in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
In a 544-page report made public yesterday, retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci said the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Department of Foreign Affairs collectively failed the men: Arab-Canadians Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyad Nureddin.
Although the judge did not formally clear the trio of allegations that they were connected to al-Qaeda — it was outside his mandate — he said Canadian officials repeatedly failed to accurately label them in shared intelligence reports.
“The importance of accuracy in communications to foreign agencies cannot be overstated,” Mr. Iacobucci concluded.
The same problem, he noted, had been an aggravating factor in the case of Maher Arar, who was sent to Syria in 2002 by the U.S. partly on the strength of faulty Canadian intelligence.
The judge did not single out any individuals for blame. Instead, he said the officials involved conscientiously carried out their duties at a time when there was “intense pressure” on intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
As in the case of Mr. Arar, however, the three men were damaged by inaccurate reports shared by Canada with the U.S., Syria and Egypt.
“Mistakes were made,” Mr. Iacobucci told reporters.
Among the most egregious mistakes revealed in yesterday’s report:
- The RCMP, in a letter to Syrian law enforcement officials, suggested Ottawa engineer Abdullah Almalki posed “an imminent threat” to Canada’s national security and linked him to al-Qaeda. “The RCMP,” the report found, “appears to have described Mr. Almalki in this way without taking steps to ensure that the description was accurate or properly qualified.”
What’s more, Mr. Iacobucci said, it appears the description came from a foreign agency in relation to another suspect — and did not apply to Mr. Almalki. “The words ‘imminent threat’ in particular were inflammatory, inaccurate and lacking investigative foundation,” he concluded.
The RCMP similarly characterized Mr. El-Maati as an “imminent threat” in a request for information to foreign agencies, including Syria and Egypt, on Sept. 29, 2001. Mr. Iacobucci said the RCMP failed to take any steps to ensure the description was “accurate or justified.”
- The RCMP sent questions to Syrian military intelligence to put to Mr. Almalki after it had been informed by consular officials that Mr. El-Maati had been tortured in Syria. The questions were sent in January 2003.
“Some of the RCMP members involved in the decision to send questions for Mr. Almalki displayed a dismissive attitude towards the issue of human rights and the possibility of torture,” Mr. Iacobucci found. “At least two RCMP members suggested that sending questions posed to Mr. Almalki might have been beneficial to his treatment.”
- CSIS sent questions for Mr. El-Maati to Syria through another foreign agency in December 2001. Mr. Iacobucci concluded that by sending the questions, CSIS likely furthered Mr. El-Maati’s detention and torture. “Syrian officials would likely have viewed these additional questions sent by Canadian officials as a ‘green light’ to continue their interrogation and detention of Mr. El-Maati, rather than a ‘red light’ to stop,” he wrote.
- CSIS sent a statement about Mr. El-Maati to Egyptian authorities in May 2003, expressing concern about his activities in the event of his release. Judge Iacobucci said CSIS failed to consider the impact that statement would have on Mr. El-Maati’s treatment. He was not released until January, 2004.
- CSIS shared information with several foreign agencies indicating that it had “confirmed” Mr. Nureddin as a human courier for Ansar al-Islam in northern Iraq. “It did so,” Mr. Iacobucci noted, “without first taking adequate measures to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information or qualify it as appropriate.”
Mr. Iacobucci told reporters that his
Study Finds Dubious Information Helped Lead to Torture of 3 Canadians
Ian Austen – NY Times
Published Oct 22, 2008
The passing of inflammatory information from Canadian police and intelligence officials to the United States contributed to the jailing and torture of three Canadian citizens by Syria, according to a report of a Canadian inquiry released Tuesday.
The inquiry, led by Frank Iacobucci, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, lacks the scope of an earlier examination of the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who was sent by United States officials from New York to Syria, where he was tortured. But the two reports have many similarities regarding the relations between North America’s security and intelligence services.
Unlike Mr. Arar, the three men in this case, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin, were not sent to Syria through the American program known as rendition. The three all went there independently at different times for personal reasons and were arrested and jailed upon their arrival.
Mr. Iacobucci confirmed a longstanding contention by the three men that Canada had tipped the United States to their travel plans. He also faulted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service for making strong claims about the men that were mainly unsupported.
The inquiry was limited to assessing the actions of Canadian officials, and the United States and several other foreign governments declined to cooperate.
In Mr. Elmaati’s case, Mr. Iacobucci concluded that the detention resulted from three events: the Mounted Police advised several foreign legal authorities, including those in the United States, that the man was “an imminent threat to public safety”; the Canadian intelligence agency told its American counterparts and others that the man was an associate of an aide to Osama Bin Laden; and the Canadian police gave the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. his travel itinerary.
The Mounties, Mr. Iacobucci wrote, “should have considered, before providing Mr. Elmaati’s travel itinerary to the U.S., that U.S. authorities might take steps to have Mr. Elmaati detained and questioned.”
In connection with Mr. Almalki, the report indicates that in October 2001, the Mounties told the United States Customs Service in a letter that he was an “Islamic extremist individual suspected of being linked to the Al Qaeda terrorist movement.”
The inquiry, however, found that this claim — and similar information given to agencies in the United States about the other men — was largely based on secondhand information. In Mr. Almalki’s case, some of it referred to another person.
The Canadian suspicion about Mr. Almalki seems to have come from his business, which involved exporting common, and in some cases obsolete, electronic components to Pakistan.
In May 2002, the Mounties met with the F.B.I. and members of other United States security agencies. Those agencies are not identified in the public version of the report, which was censored. The meeting, which was apparently intended to prompt an American criminal investigation of Mr. Almalki, included a PowerPoint presentation titled, “The Pursuit of Terrorism: A Canadian Response.” It described Mr. Almalki as a “procurement officer” for terrorist groups.
“Labeling of someone at a time when 9/11 was sort of recent can be a very serious matter,” Mr. Iacobucci said at a news conference.
Mr. Almalki, who had traveled to Syria to join his parents on a family visit, was detained for 22 months. The inquiry concluded that he, like the other two men, was tortured and held under “inhumane” conditions.
Mr. Iacobucci was not assigned to review the actions of the three men. Despite that, all three told reporters that the report of the inquiry had cleared them of any wrongdoing.
Mr. Almalki, after noting that he was apparently a victim of identity confusion, told reporters: “My life has been ruined; my reputation has been ruined. I lost my business based on information that didn’t even relate to me.”
A lawyer who represented the Canadian Arab Federation in the inquiry, James Kafieh, said the report showed that “these three men were sacrificed to show the United States that Canada was doing something.”
While Mr. Iacobucci found fault with actions by the Canadian police, intelligence investigators and diplomats, he added that no one had behaved improperly.
“Mistakes were made, but I don’t think that’s inconsistent with saying that people doing their jobs were doing so conscientiously,” he said.
The three men have all filed lawsuits against the Canadian government. Last year, the government gave Mr. Arar about 10.5 million Canadian dollars in compensation.
A classified version of the report was submitted to the government on Monday. No action is required.