Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, and Muayyed Nureddin, born in Kuwait, Syria, and Iraq, respectively, were detained by Syrian Military Intelligence during trips abroad from 2001 to 2004.
Each claimed upon return to Canada that he had been tortured by the Syrians and that Canadian security officials had supplied the Syrians with intelligence and questions to pose the detainees.
"The Canadian government degraded and dehumanized me," Almalki told reporters. "It looks like they basically did not consider me as a human being anymore, let alone a Canadian citizen. What were they thinking?
"How could any one of us, how could any Canadian feel safe?" he said of Canadian security officials.
Amnesty International Canada joined a local civil liberties association and others backing their request, saying that an independent review was "vital" to clear their names and restore confidence in Canada's security agencies: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
"All of these cases raise deeply disturbing questions about the possibility of Canadian complicity in what happened to them, complicity in their temporary imprisonment, complicity in torture," said Amnesty International Canada secretary-general Alex Neve.
While the men presented no evidence to support their claims of torture or Canadian involvement, a public inquiry into another case, that of Canadian Maher Arar, found that a review of his case was also needed, according to foreign affairs minister Peter McKay last month.
Arar was stopped in New York on his way to Canada from a trip to Tunisia in September 2002, and was then deported to Syria where he was jailed and tortured for more than a year.
A Canadian report released mid-September stated that US authorities had likely relied on faulty intelligence provided by the Mounted Police to hold and deport the 36-year-old software engineer to Syria.
Maati, who holds dual Canadian-Egyptian citizenship, was on his way to celebrate his wedding in Syria when he was stopped at the Damascus airport in November 2001, he said.
He was interrogated about information that he said could only have originated from Canada. In January 2002, he was transferred to Egyptian custody.
Nureddin was going to visit family in northern Iraq when he was stopped at the Iraqi-Syrian border in December 2003, he said.
Almalki was detained in Damascus while en route to visit family in Syria in May 2002. He claimed that he was forced to sign a false confession that he planned to bomb the Canadian parliament.
On Thursday, he said that he made the statement hoping to be immediately returned to Canada where he expected to clear his name.
"I do not think that having to endure over 1,000 lashes over one night while being interrogated is just. I do not think to be stuffed in a tire and beaten for a whole morning with an electric cable is something that I could describe," Almalki told reporters.
"Someone has to answer for the over 22 months I spent in a jail for no reason. Someone has to be held accountable for continuously feeding unreliable information that kept me in an underground solitary confinement cell for 482 consecutive days, a cell that felt, smelled, and looked like a grave," he said.
Syria denies the torture claims.
All three men were released without charges between January and March 2004.
Ottawa lodged formal protests with both Washington and Damascus over Arar's treatment Friday, a foreign affairs official said.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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