Canada has paid $31.3 million ($24.2 million U.S.) to three Canadian men as reparations for being wrongfully accused of participating in terrorism and subsequently detained and tortured by Syrian authorities.The sum was divided among Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin, and Ahmad El Maati, CTV News reported on Wednesday citing government accounts published this month. The settlement comes just months after the Liberals paid Omar Khadr, a Canadian held in Guantanamo Bay prison as a child, a reported $10.5 million ($8.2 million U.S.) settlement for violating his rights.None of the three men tortured in Syria were ever charged with terrorism crimes and all were held there at different times over the last 15 years. They have denied any links to terrorist groups.Federal authorities announced in March that they had apologized to the men for any role the government played in their mistreatment abroad and that the men received an undisclosed settlement. The three men had each filed $100 million lawsuits against the government a decade ago alleging the events ruined their lives and damaged their reputations.“They deserve gratitude and respect from all Canadians for their steadfast determination. This compensation and the apology will now help them to recover and rebuild their lives,” Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, said in a statement at the time. “It will also send a strong message that what was done to them cannot and must not ever be done to others.”A 2008 federal inquiry conducted by a former Canadian Supreme Court justice found that the actions of the RCMP, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and Foreign Affairs, indirectly contributed to their unjust detention and torture by sharing faulty intelligence with international counterparts.El Maati, a former truck driver from Toronto, was taken into custody in 2001 after travelling to Syria for his wedding. The RCMP believed he was plotting an attack on nuclear facilities in Canada. He was eventually transferred by Syrian authorities to Egypt and spent 26 months in prison.Almalki, an engineer from Ottawa, was detained in Syria in 2002 and held for almost two years after CSIS and the RCMP told international authorities he was on their watch list. After enduring torture that included hours of lashings and severe beatings, he falsely confessed to being linked to Osama bin Laden. His detention lasted for 22 months.Nureddin, a geologist from Toronto, was arrested by Syrian law enforcement in 2003 after he visited family in Iraq. He was held for 34 days.In 2007, the Conservative government at the time reached a $10 million settlement with Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer born in Syria who was travelling through the U.S. in 2002 on his way home from vacation when he was deported to Syria and then jailed and tortured. Like the three other men, he was accused of having links to terrorism.A judicial inquiry in 2006 found that Arar had no terrorism connections and that the RCMP provided false information to U.S. authorities.
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