The Globe and Mail's Colin Freeze has developed a timeline -- The Road to Torture -- on torture and the war on terror in Canada, specifically the cases of Maher Arar, Abdullah Almaki and Ahmad Abou El Maati.
It's an ambitious undertaking, and it shows some of the strengths and weaknesses of online interactives.
First of all, let me congratulate any news organization that strives to offer context. There's a blizzard of "news" out there, but methinks that without context, it's only entertainment to most people, if not simply meaningless noise.
Interactives like this can help the inquisitive reader understand the backstory -- and to me, that's crucial to understanding the news.
Now, with that in mind, here's some criticisms:
The backstory For example, the timeline should have the date Dec. 14, 1999. What happened on that date, you might ask? U.S. border officials, acting on a tip from the RCMP, arrested Ahmed Ressam, the "Millenium Bomber" who had hoped to attack Los Angeles International Airport. He had been crossing from B.C. into the U.S. Ressam would eventually co-operate. He alerted U.S. officials to the fact that al Qaeda sleeper cells were in the U.S. -- something brought to U.S. President George W. Bush's attention in a notorious Aug. 6, 2001 security memo. Remember that Ressam had been living in Montreal. Along with the Khadrs, he is one of Canada's brand-name jihadists. Oct. 12, 2000 is another date that should be recorded; On that day, Al Qaeda suicide bombers struck the U.S.S. Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen. This attack was a major escalation by al Qaeda, which had attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But the international WOT part of the timeline is blank until you get back to August 1996, when al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States. Looking at the timeline, and you might draw the conclusion that Osama just sat on his hands until 9/11 (the fulcrum of the timeline). Not so. Some other key blanks in there are when the Taliban took control in Afghanistan (they captured Kabul, the capital, in September 1996) and the U.S.'s attempt to take out bin Laden and other top al Qaeda figures with a cruise missile attack in August 1998 -- significant, because it infuriated Taliban leader Muhammad Mullah Omar. A bit more background on Afghanistan is essential because at least two of the men featured in the timeline, El Maati and Elzahabi, had fought there during the civil war period after the Soviet occupation ended -- although they weren't involved with al Qaeda or the Taliban. The timeline notes that Almaki went to work for Human Concern International in October 1992 -- a Muslim charity controlled by ... Ahmed Said Khadr! He is considered an early member and financier of al Qaeda. Given the Khadrs' significance, perhaps a separate row on Canadian WOT developments would have been warranted to provide more details (anyone rememember the post-9/11 anti-terror bill? Project Thread? The Toronto 18?). Khadr Sr. does show up in the global timeline when Pakistani intelligence officers kill him in a 2003 raid. So, on a cursory glace, exactly two mentions of one of Canada's most notorious jihadists -- whoops, I almost missed the arrest of his son Abdullah in Pakistan. The conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya and the Middle East were also key events in global jihad, but you really wouldn't know that from looking at the global timeline. Making judgment calls Perhaps Mr. Freeze also made the reasonable and entirely defensible judgment that adding items on those would make the waters even more murky (but he does mention some ties to those conflicts). Journalism, for better or worse, is about making judgments. If you make something too informative, it can become unwieldy. If you don't make it informative enough, then what's the point? Speaking of what's-the-point, you can scroll backwards on the timeline to the year 1900, but there's no information. The story on the timeline seems to start in 1989 (it really doesn't get rolling until post-9/11). Why have all this dead space going back in time if you aren't going to reward people for scrolling through it? For example, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The timeline doesn't even show that. Bottom line: The interactive is great and is well worth exploring for those interested in the topic at hand. But I would respectfully suggest it could also be strengthened in the areas I've noted. One other thing: The Globe has done some great stuff on national security over the years. Perhaps it could also pull together a list of "required reading" (for lack of a better term) from its archives of stories that contribute to the narrative but maybe don't fit into the timeline format. Pointing to some other resources might also be helpful. And finally, why not open up comments on it and have Mr. Freeze do an online chat about the project?