Canada says its OK to torture terrorism suspects

The Canadian government believes it’s OK to torture people and abuse human rights as a means of protecting national security and in the fight against international terrorism.

The issue will come at next week at a commission of inquiry in the Canadian capital, Ottawa, in the case of three Canadians of Arab decent who claim Canadian officials set the stage for their torture overseas.

In 2006 the Conservative government appointed former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci to investigate the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin.

All three of them have claimed that they were tortured in Syria. In addition El Maati said his rights were abused in Egypt as well. They say it’s all because of flawed information from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the country’s spy agency, CSIS.

A briefing paper prepared for next week’s hearing states that Canada must maintain relationships with "non-traditional" allies, some of whom do not always treat people appropriately, in order to fight terrorism.

The federal brief stresses that both CSIS and the RCMP require the assistance of foreign agencies to fulfil their security mandates since Canada is "a net importer of information."

"The fact that a particular country may have a poor human rights record is not sufficient, without other compelling circumstances, to preclude the sharing of information." And the government admits that, despite its best efforts, Canada's Foreign Affairs Department "cannot always ensure the protection of its citizens who are dual nationals."

The briefing paper says some countries, particularly in the Middle East, will not recognize the formal rights of the other country of nationality, such as Canada. In says even when it can confirm that a Canadian who holds another citizenship is detained, it if often denied access to that individual.

Almalki, El Maati and Nureddin call the government submissions deeply troubling. In a joint response to the briefing paper they say there is the clear implication that "Canada must for law enforcement reasons, albeit reluctantly, turn a blind eye to the human rights abuses inflicted on its citizens detained abroad."

The three say the government submissions reinforce a false perception they are terrorists who have just not been "caught" yet.

"The underlying premise is that sufficient accurate and verified information existed about these men to justify sharing it with other states, including those known to abuse human rights."

Advocates for the three men want to know whether the Canadian government 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.

All three men are back in Canada and have not been charged with any crime.

The three note that upon being detained abroad they were traveling openly under their own names on Canadian passports.

Amnesty International said the prohibition on torture is absolute, adding that Canada is duty-bound under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, along with the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

"Under no circumstances can Canada engage in activities that would render it complicit or otherwise participate, instigate, consent to or acquiesce in the use of torture," said Amnesty.
"The prohibition is intransgressible" under any circumstance, "including in times of war or in the face of terrorist threats."

Amnesty says in the cases of the three men Canada should have known that all three men were at serious risk of brutal treatment, says the submission noting that "Widely and publicly available country reports indicated that torture was used regularly in national security cases in both Egypt and Syria."

The international human rights agency said Canada is not only obliged to shun use of torture but to proactively prevent it while protecting the rights of all Canadian citizens equally. It says that duty is heightened in cases involving national-security detainees in countries where they face risk of mistreatment.

Amnesty also pointed to the case of Ottawa engineer Maher Arar who was unjustly labelled a terrorist and jailed and tortured in Syria.

The Canadian government apologized to Arar and awarded C$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.

Jai Parasram | Toronto, Jan 04, 2008