The government has announced the three members of a panel of legal experts who will advise MPs looking into secret Afghan detainee documents.

Former Supreme Court of Canada justices Claire L'Heureux-Dubé and Frank Iacobucci, and former chief justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court, Donald I. Brenner, were named as the panel of arbitrators by Justice Minister Rob Nicholson Wednesday.

"These highly-respected legal experts will help to ensure that the work of the Ad Hoc Committee of Parliamentarians does not jeopardize Canada's national defence, international relations and national security," Nicholson said in a news release.

Nicholson said the trio was agreed to unanimously between the government and two opposition parties, the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois.

The NDP is planning a Wednesday afternoon news conference in which it is expected they will criticize the picks. The NDP refused to join the committee, saying they couldn't agree to the terms.

A small group of MPs will go through some 40,000 sensitive documents related to Afghan detainees. One MP and one alternative, from the Tories, Liberals and the Bloc began pouring over the documents earlier this week – some seven months after opposition MPs passed a motion demanding access to them.

The independent panel will decide which document can be released to the public.

The documents are related to potentially explosive allegations that Afghan detainees were tortured by authorities after being handed over by Canadian soldiers.

L'Heureux-Dube sat on the Supreme Court of Canada from 1987 to her retirement in 2002.

Iacobucci sat in the same court from 1991 to 2004. It is not the first time he has been called on by the Tory government.

Earlier this year he was called on to examine the Afghan detainee documents and head up an inquiry into Canada's involvement with the torture of three Arab-Canadians abroad.

Brenner was a justice on the B.C Supreme Court from 1992 to 2001, before serving eight years as its chief justice. He retired to join a law firm in 2009.