Ottawa is launching an inquiry into the cases of three Arab-Canadians who were imprisoned in Syria, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day announced Tuesday.

Day said he has appointed former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci to look into the cases of Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin and Ahmad El Maati.

Iacobucci will be asked to determine whether "the detention of these three individuals to Syria or Egypt resulted from actions of Canadian officials, particularly in relation to the sharing of information with foreign countries," Day said.

"The commissioner will be asked to determine whether those actions or the actions of Canadian consular officials were deficient in these cases. And third, he will be asked to determine whether any mistreatment of these three individuals in Syria or Egypt resulted from the inappropriate actions of any Canadian officials," he said.

The minister made the announcement in response to Justice Dennis O'Connor second report on the Maher Arar file.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was detained in New York in September 2002 and transferred by U.S. authorities to a Damascus cell where he was tortured.

In his first report that looked into the Arar case, O'Connor said the cases of the three men raised "troubling questions'' about the role of Canadian officials.

Arar first came to the attention of the RCMP in late 2001 because of his contacts with other Arab-Canadians targeted in an anti-terror probe known as Project A-O Canada.

The chief targets of A-O Canada were Almalki, an Ottawa-based engineer, and El Maati, a Toronto truck driver.

Both say they were tortured in Syria after they travelled there on personal business. El Maati was transferred to from Syria to Egypt, where he was also detained and tortured, he says.

Like Arar, both suspect the RCMP and the CSIS fed information to the Syrians.

A third Canadian, Toronto-area geologist Muayyed Nureddin, was also imprisoned in Syria.

Amnesty International and other human rights groups had been pressing the government to launch a new investigation into the allegations

They said the cases suggest a wider trend in which police and security officials are "contracting out'' the torture of Canadian terror suspects to oppressive regimes abroad.

The inquiry's findings will be submitted to the government by January 31, 2008, Day said.