Ahmad El Maati listens to a question during a news conference in Ottawa Tuesday Oct. 21, 2008

OTTAWA – Canadian intelligence agents went to Egypt to get information about a Toronto man and likely contributed to his abuse by authorities there, newly released documents say.

The previously unknown visit by CSIS officers became public Tuesday as a federal commission disclosed once-secret pages of an inquiry report on the overseas torture of Ahmad El Maati and two other Arab-Canadians.

The Harper government and commission lawyers squabbled for more than a year about the sensitive portions of the report, which the government balked at making public due to national security concerns.

In his report released in October 2008, former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci found that Canadian officials were likely partly to blame for the torture of El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin by sharing information – including unfounded accounts of extremism – with foreign agencies.

The men, all of whom deny involvement in terrorism, were abused in Syrian prison cells. El Maati, 45, was tortured by Egyptian captors as well.

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Tags: Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, CSIS, Egypt, Harper Government, Iacobucci inquiry, Muayyed Nureddin, Syria, Toronto

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