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Canada must ensure the fight against “pernicious” terrorist threats does not compromise the most cherished civil rights, a retired Supreme Court judge warned Tuesday, concluding an investigation into the torture of three Arab-Canadians abroad.

Frank Iacobucci held federal security officials “indirectly” responsible for the torture of three Canadians jailed in Syria and Egypt between 2001 and 2004, but also argued the agents had acted mostly conscientiously during a 2001-era investigation aimed at finding al-Qaeda members in Canada.

Ruling that “mistakes of various kinds will be made” by federal agents, Mr. Iacobucci stopped short of clearing the ex-detainees or recommending compensation.

But his findings that Canada sent inaccurate, inflammatory and ill-considered intelligence to U.S. and Middle East agencies will likely provide the former prisoners ample ammunition in lawsuits they have launched that allege torture by proxy.

Mr. Iacobucci found that the RCMP wrongly branded people who had not been arrested in Canada as “imminent threats” in international intelligence exchanges.

Such information caused trouble for the three men when they later made trips out of Canada. He faulted the Mounties for sharing information – including one man's travel itinerary – with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency without stipulating how it could be used.

Mr. Iacobucci, who interviewed Canadian officials behind closed doors over the past two years, said much remained unknown to him. While he didn't hold Canadian agencies directly responsible for the overseas detentions, he hinted at the unseen hand of Washington.

Once the men were jailed in the Middle East, messages from Canada were found to have made their ordeals worse.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service sent a list of questions for the Syrians to ask Ahmad Abou El Maati, which Mr. Iacobucci concluded might have been taken as a “green light” for torture.

After Mr. El Maati was transferred to Egypt, CSIS sent a “statement of concern” to Egypt just as it was about to release him – which likely prolonged the detention.

By highlighting these and other “deficiencies,” the internal inquiry into the actions of Canadian officials in the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Mr. El Maati, and Muayyed Nureddin closed a controversial chapter for the nation's counterterrorism agencies, whose investigative actions after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have frequently been seen to backfire. The three men became caught up in the agencies' hunt for possible al-Qaeda operatives.

While Mr. Iacobucci highlighted institutional shortcomings, he held no official blameworthy for torture.

“I found no evidence that any of the individual officials whose actions were material to my mandate were on a frolic of their own,” he said at a press conference.

While not given a formal mandate to make recommendations, he said he hoped Canadian agents will be very precise and diligent in their intelligence exchanges with foreign countries. He also said diplomats must always work to protect the rights of Canadian prisoners abroad.

The margin for error in counterterrorism investigations, he said, is very low.

“This inquiry involves the appropriate response of our democracy in Canada to the pernicious phenomenon of terrorism, and ensuring that, in protecting the security of our country, we respect the human rights and freedoms that so many have fought to achieve,” he wrote in the preface to his findings.

“... It seems inevitable, in the struggle against terrorism that mistakes of various kinds will be made.”

The federal government has stricken about 20 per cent of Mr. Iacobucci's findings from the public document for national security reasons, and he suggested Tuesday he may go to court to try to have more released.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said Tuesday that any apology to the ex-prisoners is premature – “civil suits are in progress right now, so it would be inappropriate for me to comment” – but added no one should doubt the gravity of torture.

“The very fact that these individuals were incarcerated in Syria, I believe, is torture in and of itself,” he said.

Mr. Day argued that many poor practices have been addressed, and that he is working to implement the Maher Arar inquiry's recommendations of greater oversight of security agencies.

The ex-prisoners welcomed the findings, saying the details left them both outraged and feeling vindicated.

“I was labelled an imminent threat,” said Mr. Almalki, who was jailed for two years in Syria after starting a business selling radios to Pakistan in the mid-1990s.

Though he said he has difficulty concentrating after suffering severe torture, the significance of one passage describing how he was wrongly lumped in with more serious suspects was not lost on him.

“The words ‘imminent threat' in particular were inflammatory, inaccurate and lacking investigative foundation,” Mr. Iacobucci wrote.

“I can say that even if all of the officials' suspicions about Mr. Almalki were correct, the label ‘imminent threat' would not have been [correct].”

The report was also seen as a vindication by Mr. El Maati.

Seven years ago, he was whipped with electrical cables in a Syrian interrogation room until he “confessed” that he wanted to explode a truck bomb outside Parliament Hill.

On Tuesday, the former Afghan mujahed, whose shoulders are broad as a doorframe, clutched the report about his case while speaking just across the street from the Peace Tower.

It means a lot to him, he said. “Canada knows I was tortured,” he said.

“Canada knows the information about me was wrong.”