News that former Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci has determined that three Muslim-Canadian citizens were tortured while imprisoned in Syria and Egypt, has come as no surprise to Canada's Muslim communities. Anyone familiar with the governance of Arab countries would have never doubted for a moment claims that Ahmad El-Maati, Muayyed Nureddin and Abdullah Almalki had been beaten by prison guards attempting to extract forced confessions from the three.
The brutality of the prison systems in Arab countries is legendary. Countless people have died for the simple crime of being in opposition to the ruling juntas or kingdoms. In mistreating political prisoners, Syria and Egypt are second only to Sudan and Saudi Arabia, now that Saddam Hussein is no longer around. The region is a graveyard of human rights with the population so numbed by decades of authoritarianism that even the genocide in Darfur fails to bring people onto the streets. So it is unsurprising that Canadians, some with alleged links to 1990s Afghan wars, got caught up in an Arab state-security machine.
What did surprise me and many other Muslim Canadians was the misguided reaction of the three men and the groups backing them, particularly the Canadian Arab Federation, Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Canadian Muslim Civil Liberties Association. If I had been tortured -- and I have been -- my primary grievance would be against my torturers and their masters. But Messrs El-Maati, Almalki and Nureddin turned their guns on Canada, not Syria and Egypt.
Instead of asking for damages from Damascus and Cairo or demanding that Ottawa file an official protest with Syria and Egypt, the three torture victims went after Canada's government, and now demand an apology from it.
This, despite the fact Justice Iacobucci made it very clear in all three cases the arrests in Syria and Egypt did not come about as a result of any direct Canadian action. His inquiry "did not conclude that (the detentions or) any mistreatment resulted directly from any action of Canadian officials."
Despite finding many flaws in Canadian officials' performance of their duties, Justice Iacobucci concluded that he "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." In selected cases, there was at most a likelihood of indirect, unintended contribution by officials to circumstances leading to detention and mistreatment.
I would have expected the three gentlemen and their lobbyists would have been organizing demonstrations outside the Egyptian and Syrian embassies, but to my knowledge none have taken place. In fact, in 2005 a visiting minister from Syria was fêted as a guest of honour at a Toronto event hosted by Arab groups, including those prominently supporting the three, today. No one protested at the event to demand an end to torture in the Syrian prison system.
If we as Canadians are being asked to apologize, perhaps it is time for us to ask Messrs El-Maati, Almalki and Nureddin some questions of our own, and demand explanations.
Why, for example, did Mr. El-Maati support the most vicious faction of the Mujahedeen while in Afghanistan?
There are tens of thousands of Canadians of Pakistani and Afghan descent in this country. We all are aware of the phenomenon that author Ahmed Rashid describes as the "Arab Afghans," many of them Canadians. If human rights are of concern to these groups now, then are they willing to repudiate and denounce the doctrine of armed jihad that inflicted untold suffering on the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan?
So far the media have been very kind to the three men.
For example, Mr. El-Maati would have us believe, through author Kerry Pither, that his move to Afghanistan in 1991 was a result of an inherited "love of travel from his parents," which took him on "months-long road trips" to Europe. He tells Ms. Pither in her book Dark Days that his "love for travel and adventure, as well as a sense of religious and humanitarian duty, were calling him to Afghanistan. ... 'I finally made up my mind in 1991 to go.' "
But soon after his arrival, Ahmed El-Maati joined the army of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a character reviled as the most vicious of the jihadis. Mr. Hekmatyar wantonly killed innocent civilians, skinned his prisoners alive and his soldiers threw acid in the face of any Afghan women who dared not wear the burqa. Despite these well-documented atrocities, as Ms. Pither writes, Mr. El-Maati trivializes his former boss's crimes as not "any worse than his rivals."
Whether one was adventuring in Afghanistan or Pakistan or running a private Islamic school in Toronto that was a breeding ground for Islamists, these actions need to be repudiated before Canada starts doling out its next set of apologies.
Ahmad El-Maati, Muayyed Nureddin and Abdullah Almalki were victims of torture and both Syria and Egypt should answer for their crimes. But these men are not Canadian heroes who should be idolized the way they are being treated by the media.
As a Muslim Canadian, I need assurances from the three gentlemen that my religion Islam was not used as political ideology; my country was not used as a parking lot and its passport not defiled as a flag of convenience.
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Tarek Fatah is founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (Wiley 2008).
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Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm
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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
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Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona
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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:
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