"Public Interest and Canada's Honour"

"These steps are necessary in order to provide access to justice to the litigants. But also to comply with the court's and this country's responsibilities to ensure compliance with the United Nations' Convention Against Torture.
"There has been a protracted and seemingly interminable review process underway before the Federal Court."
Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Perell

Justice Perell announced "it is in the public interest and a matter of Canada's honour" that a trial proceed revolving around Abdullah Almalki, a Syrian Canadian who was arrested and tortured in 2002 in Damascus, largely on Canadian intelligence that was unreliable and incorrect. Mr. Almalki is suing the Government of Canada for $100 million in damages, for his 22 months of imprisonment in Syria and the torture that accompanied it.

He holds government security and intelligence agencies responsible.

"The government has been trying to delay this case much as they can, but we finally have a court date", 43-year-od Almalki said of the schedule he was given for a September 2016 trial. Judge Perrell imposed a number of deadlines mandating that all necessary documents be produced and witnesses examined in a timely manner to initiate the trial.

The UN treaty to which the judge referred binds signatory nations, of whom Canada is one of many, to ensure that their legal systems proffer to victims of torture an avenue of legal redress. And in June 2012, a UN committee reproached Canada for its laggardly approach to settling this issue, urging it to take "immediate steps" to compensate Mr. Almalki along with two other Canadian citizens who were tortured in the wake of 9/11, while abroad.

Two federal enquiries appear to have validated the claims of Mr. Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, who were detained and tortured in Syria. The federal government has balked at accepting their findings. A "profoundly complicated and excruciatingly frustrating" process of deciding which documents or parts thereof should remain secret and which can be used in a courtroom without impinging on Canadian security issues has arisen.

Over five thousand documents are being reviewed in Federal Court relating to government claims their release could damage national security, national defence or international relations. "There has been a protracted and seemingly interminable review process underway before the Federal Court", as a result, commented Justice Perell.

Former Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci detailed a series of investigatory and diplomatic events in the three cases, in his report. These events, which took place between 2001 and 2004 implicated the government as being partly responsible for the events that overtook the three men, according to the report. The RCMP, in Mr. Almalki's instance had inaccurately labelled him as "linked by association to al-Qaeda", an "imminent threat", in reports forwarded to Syria.

Intelligence, according to Justice Iacobucci, was shared by the RCMP with U.S. Agencies about Mr. Almalki, with some of that information making its way to Syrian authorities who then used it in their interrogation of Mr. Almalki. Furthermore the RCMP, according to the report, sent questions directly to the Syrians to be posed to Mr. Almalki, even while they were aware that the Syrians used torture to extract information.

A letter was drafted to the RCMP by officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, concerned that sending questions to the Syrians was a severely compromising act, offending domestic and international law, much less Canada's foreign policy. The letter, however, had never, in the event, been forwarded to the RCMP, an error of judgement and communication on the part of DFAIT.

Mr. Almalki had come under intense scrutiny by the RCMP, CSIS and the FBI in 2001, after 9/11. A six-year investigation was unleashed. His home was raided, his computer analyzed, his friends and relatives interviewed, and in he end he was never at any time charged with committing any crime. After the issuance of the Iacobucci report in2008, a Commons committee recommended apologizing to Almalki and compensating him.

Canadians can be forgiven for feeling conflicted over this matter. It appears clear enough that a dreadful wrong has been done to these three men, and there is complicity by default in this injustice on the part of government security agencies through sheer incompetent sloppiness. Which makes the government in some part guilty of a certain level of malfeasance injurious to the well-being of  Canadian citizens.

On the other hand, the lawsuit claiming $100-million in compensatory tax funding represents a bite too big to bear. All things considered, the climate of the time led to fears and suspicions and innocent peoples' lives were drawn into that web of fear and suspicion. The excruciating experience of these men of Middle East descent, treated inhumanely by the government agents of their former nations is a compelling story of brutality assaulting innocence.

But there also appears to be a measure of malice aforethought in the Almalki family's vengeance-driven lawsuit with its absurd goal of $100-million to help clear the black bruise of injustice only in part delivered by Canadian agents; world events, and a malevolent interpretation of a religion the three men share led to the barbarity of terrorism which caught these men in a faulty protocol of self-defence.