Iacobucci Report Released

The Canadian government has released the massive (544 pages) final report of the Internal Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin [PDF] chaired by The Honourable Frank Iacobucci, q.c. Commissioner. There is a secret report, as well as this public version, containing material subject to national security confidentiality.

It is worth, I believe, quoting at some length from Justice Iacobucci’s opening “Commissioner’s Statement”:

[R]espect for rights and freedoms is a constraint on a democracy that ter-rorists do not share. Indeed by their very actions they repudiate these rights and freedoms. For the terrorist, the end justifies the means. A democracy, however, must justify the means to any end—including, in this case, its response to terror-ism. Canada must choose means to deal with terrorism that are governed by the rule of law and respect for our cherished values of freedom and due process. This is a balance that is easy to describe but difficult to attain. However, difficulty of achievement cannot be an excuse for not trying to achieve that equilibrium.

It seems inevitable, in the struggle against terrorism, that mistakes of vari-ous kinds will be made. This is unfortunate: mistakes can carry serious conse-quences not only for individuals affected but also for our institutions and our collective faith in our institutions. But we should be very grateful to the many men and women who as Canadian officials must daily confront the challenges discussed in this report, and exercise their best judgement to try to attain the delicate balance that both protects our democracy and preserves and enhances our fundamental freedoms.

This Inquiry is about the actions of Canadian officials relating to three Canadian citizens who were detained and mistreated abroad. Conducting the Inquiry has reinforced my conviction that we can and must continue to do everything possible to protect our country, and to do so with genuine respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of Canadian citizens.

The Inquiry examined the conduct of CSIS, the RCMP and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) in respect of the three men, in part to determine:

whether the detention of Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati and Muayyed Nureddin in Syria or Egypt resulted, directly or indirectly, from actions of Canadian officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign countries and, if so, whether those actions were deficient in the circumstances;

The conclusions of the report are too detailed to summarize easily. It can be said, however, that Justice Iacobucci found that no Canadian official was directly responsible for the imprisonment or torture of any of the men but that there were deficiencies in the agencies’ conduct with respect to each of the men.