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Why did Canada settle? In 2008, a federal commission of inquiry found that three Canadian citizens –Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin – had been falsely accused of links to terrorists, imprisoned in Syria and tortured. In the case of El Maati, he was also imprisoned and tortured in Egypt. Three Canadian agencies, the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International trade (DFAIT), were found to have indirectly contributed to the torture of the three men by sharing inflammatory and inaccurate information about each with countries known to torture, and in which the men were imprisoned.

The commission observed that Canada should not simply recycle and rely upon imported intelligence from countries that torture; Canada should not pass on unqualified information to foreign agencies; and Canada should recognize that “loose and imprecise language” used by its officials can have tragic human rights consequences for the individual.

The commission came out with its report on Almalki, El Maati, and Nureddin two years after the report of the Federal Commission of Inquiry regarding the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, another Canadian citizen. The Arar Inquiry exonerated Maher Arar, finding that CSIS and the RCMP made serious mistakes passing on inaccurate information to the United States and Syria, resulting in Arar being “rendered” to Syria, where he was detained and tortured for almost a year.