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OTTAWA - Amnesty International Canada and six other advocacy groups say they are being "used" to lend credibility to a secretive inquiry into how security agencies handled the cases of three Muslim Canadians who allege torture at the hands of Middle East interrogators.
The groups say they have been completely shut out since being granted legal standing last spring at the internal inquiry being led by former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci into the cases of Ahmad Elmaati, Abdullah Almalki, and Muayyed Nureddin.
"Even more dramatically, that applies for the three men and their legal teams," said Amnesty secretary general Alex Neve. "They too have not seen single word on a single page of a single document and have not been allowed into the room for one hour of any interview of any of the government officials who are being examined."
Neve released an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper calling on the government to champion greater public access to the workings of the inquiry.
The letter was signed by Amnesty, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Organization, the Canadian Arab Federation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Canada, the Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association, and Human Rights Watch.
Iacobucci is due to report back to the federal government by the end of January. Neve said more public access could be granted "without unduly delaying the process."
But Iacobucci's commission counsel John Laskin said the groups have already met in "off the record" sessions with the inquiry's legal team and once with Iacobucci.
Neve said the meetings were merely procedural updates.
Laskin said the inquiry is bound by its terms of reference to do an "internal inquiry" not a "public" inquiry.
Commentary by David Harris: Leave Inquiry to Seek Truth
