OTTAWA - The Harper government moved Friday to end the impasse over Afghan detainee documents by dropping the matter into the lap of a retired Supreme Court justice.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said Frank Iacobucci will vet the controversial material in light of national and operational security considerations and decide what MPs can see.
"In the case of injurious information, he will report to me on whether the information or a summary of it can be disclosed and report on the form of disclosure or any conditions on disclosure," Nicholson told the House of Commons.
He called it "an independent, comprehensive review."
He couldn't offer full details of Iacobucci's assignment, saying it had just been settled, but he promised MPs a complete outline of the judge's responsibilities as soon as possible.
Handing the issue to the veteran jurist appears aimed at staving off a potentially troubling confrontation with the opposition in the Commons. But the move hasn't ended the conflict, and debate over the controversy continues.
The House voted in December to force the release of documents outlining what the government knew about the risks of torture for detainees captured by Canadians soldiers, then handed over to Afghan authorities in 2006-07.
A special committee of MPs was told last fall that the risks were clear at the time, but detainees were still handed over for months before a new policy was introduced in 2007 giving Canada a right to monitor Afghan jail conditions.
Opposition MPs said they had a right to the documents, but the government countered that the material was sensitive and had to be protected.
Liberal MP Derek Lee has threatened to bring in a motion to hold the government in contempt of Parliament.
Nicholson's move may have staved off that threat. Lee welcomed the decision, although he said he would have liked to see a clear admission that Parliament has the power to force release of the documents.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said he will need to see the terms of reference given to Iacobucci before he decides whether to support it.
There's also some question about how long Iacobucci will take to report.
Iacobucci, 72, is a former law professor and deputy justice minister who served on the high court from 1991 to 2005. He recently led an inquiry into on the overseas torture of three Arab-Canadians.
Several disputed pages of his findings were made public last week -- 16 months after his original report.
The Harper government and inquiry lawyers negotiated for more than a year about the sensitive portions of the report, which the government tried to keep secret due to national security concerns.
In his report released in October 2008, Iacobucci found that Canadian officials were likely partly to blame for the torture of Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin by sharing information -- including unfounded accounts of extremism -- with foreign agencies.
