Innocence Betrayed

"[CSIS investigators] have expressed the opinion that despite their best efforts, they have never been able to substantiate that Almalki is in fact a procurement officer for the Bin Laden organization and were often quite careful to characterize him as an alleged or suspected procurement officer."
"They were quite candid in our discussion that any further investigation efforts were unlikely to uncover evidence or information which would substantially alter their view."
"The letter [from the FBI to the RCMP] went on to indicate that much information on those individuals in fact came from Canadian sources."
RCMP Insp. Michael Cabana

"They had already investigated me to death. They should have been the ones standing up to the Syrians, saying, 'You shouldn't be detaining him because he's clean'. But they did the opposite."
Abdullah Almalki, complainant, Ottawa

Abdullah Almalki, left, speaks at a press conference at the National Press Theatre in Ottawa on October 21, 2008.  Jean Levac, CanWest News Service / The Ottawa Citizen

Looks like yet another situation where the Government of Canada will eventually offer monetary recompense to Abdullah Almalki of Ottawa. Who was erroneously, it seems, and harmfully identified by an RCMP national security team as an imminent threat to Canada as an "important member" of al-Qaeda. This is the descriptive of the man which was sent on to foreign agencies, even though Canadian intelligence had expressed doubts about those claims.

Details of the man's international travel plans were shared with other agencies including the CIA, right after the 9/11 events that shook the world in the scope of its unimaginable horror. The terrorists infiltrated the U.S., making use of the opportunity to learn how to negotiate their plans into action through the auspices of American tutelage in flight procedures, and then used what they had gleaned to succeed in demolishing Americans' belief in their geographic inviolability.

In that charged, demoralized and paranoid atmosphere, the information disseminated by the RCMP could be regarded as a death sentence. Mr. Almalki did not meet death, but he did experience something close to it in the torture he endured in a Syrian prison. A native Syrian, he had travelled there to see his ailing grandmother, trusting that he would be safe, unaware that he had been identified as a terrorist.

"The available information clearly confirms the intent of Canadian investigators in sharing the travel information was, if possible, to arrange for or assist in his detention before he could return to Canada", his lawyers charge in their submission to the Federal Court of Canada. They have launched a $100-million civil suit against federal officials for his Syrian detention and torture, where he spent 22 months in prison after his 2002 arrest at the airport in Damascus.

In 1998 Canadian security agents were alerted to Mr. Almalki when some of the communications equipment he sold through his business was discovered in the hands of the Taliban. CSIS agents interviewing Mr. Almalki were informed by him that his business sold equipment to a large Pakistani company, Micro Electronics International, which in turn resold the equipment to other clients, including the Pakistani military.

It is now well enough known that the Pakistani government and its military recruited, trained and equipped the Afghan Taliban; little wonder some of that equipment ended up in their hands. The existence of an RCMP memo has been revealed dated September 5, 2001 following a meeting with CSIS officials which stated that "CSIS have not uncovered information that would lead them to believe the subject (Almalki) is doing something illegal."

Despite which the RCMP continued to describe Mr. Almalki in terms of terrorist activities and intrigue inimical to Western interests. A fax was sent by the RCMP to its liaison officers in Islamabad, Rome, Delhi, Washington, London, Berlin and Paris reporting that CSIS had determined the man was an "important member" of al-Qaeda. Soon afterward the RCMP liaison officer in Rome sent letters to agencies in other countries, including Syria, citing Almalki as being an "imminent threat" to Canada's national security.

He was arrested by Syrian officials when he disembarked from his flight to Damascus in May 2002. Mr. Almalki believes the purpose of the sharing of his travel information was to have him detained for questioning overseas. "It goes, I think, directly to the heart of the matter: No one has been held to account for what amounts to the kidnapping of a Canadian citizen", he charged.

Looks like he has an incontrovertible case.