Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Seeking to do your duty conscientiously while indirectly being responsible for torture and imprisonment.

Here is a quote from Iacobucci from the CBC.


"I found no evidence that any of these officials were seeking to do anything other than carry out conscientiously the duties and responsibilities of the institutions of which they were a part," former Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci concluded in his report, made public Tuesday, 22 months after the inquiry began.

These conscientious persons included some person or person who labelled El Maati as linked to Al Qaeda and an imminent threat to Canadian security on the basis of intelligence not collected by the RCMP and not verified:

He noted three instances of information sharing by Canadian officials that led indirectly to El Maati's detention. The Toronto truck driver was arrested by Syrian officials in 2001 when he was in Damascus to attend his wedding. He was later transferred to Egypt, spending a total of 26 months in prison.
The report said that in September 2001, the RCMP described El Maati to foreign law officials, including Syrian officials, as "linked through association to al-Qaeda" and an "imminent threat to public safety."
"The RCMP appears to have described Mr. El Maati in its way without taking steps to ensure that the description was accurate or properly qualified," Iacobucci wrote, adding that the source of the information did not come from the force's own investigation

The same sort of mislabelling occurs with respect to the other two. It is for that reason the three think the report clears their name-at least to some extent.

Apparently this gross incompetence which resulted in imprisonment and torture for the three Canadians will go completely unpunished, just as I predicted. In fact no one even seems to be calling for anyone to be held accountable. Listen to the sweet voice of reason Iacobucci.

It is neither necessary nor appropriate that I make findings concerning the actions of any individual Canadian official, and I have not done so," Iacobucci wrote.

He is correct. He earned his pay. After all no Canadian official held any torture weapons or directly ordered torture. Gross incompetence is no big deal when you are successfully carrying out rendition lite and helping out the war on terror. Note that neither the US, Syria, Egypt, nor Malaysia would co-operate with the investigation. Now I wonder why! The U.S. and Canada co-operate when dirty tricks are involved but not when injustices come up and the innocent need to be absolved of suspicions.

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