Canada Handed Detainees to Torturers
Forces in Afghanistan Delivered Suspects to Afghan Officials
Oct 15, 2009
When the issue of the torture of terrorism suspects in Afghanistan was raised in April 2007, the Conservative government went into full denial mode.
Faced with the allegations, writes Allan Woods in The Toronto Star (October 15, 2009),
“Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismissed them as Taliban lies and terrorist propaganda.” Then-Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor also repeatedly denied in Parliament that prisoner transfers were taking place.
Early Warning of Torture in Afghanistan
Despite the frequent and vehement denials, Woods reports that, “the Canadian government had been warned by one of its most senior diplomats in Kandahar a full year before, in May 2006, of ‘serious, imminent, and alarming’ evidence of prisoner abuse.”
This news is contained in an affidavit that has been filed by Richard Colvin of the Department of Foreign Affairs with the Military Police Complaints Commission in Ottawa which is carrying out an investigation into the allegations.
Government lawyers are trying to keep the contents of the affidavit concealed from public view.
Afghan Jails Notorious for Prisoner Abuse
Graeme Smith, a Globe and Mail reporter in Kandahar, Afghanistan, revealed (April 24, 2007) that people suspected of being Taliban members and taken into custody by Canadian troops were being handed over to local authorities.
Kandahar’s prisons are notorious for their medieval brutality towards inmates. When Mr. Smith interviewed 30 or so prisoners he found that reputation was well-deserved.
Smith wrote that prisoners said “they were beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked, and subjected to electric shocks during interrogation.” It seems Afghan police and soldiers were involved in the violence but the worst offenders were members of the country’s National Directorate of Security (NDS).
Torture in Afghan Prisons Corroborated by Human Rights Watch
In November 2006, Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is in overall command of the Afghanistan mission. In part, the letter said: “The NDS operates detention centres that fail to meet international standards for the treatment of detainees…Human Rights Watch has received credible reports of detainees being mistreated by the NDS; in some cases the treatment amounted to torture.”
Transfer of Prisoners a Violation of Geneva Conventions
Article 12 of the Third Geneva Convention, to which Canada is a party, says that “…Prisoners of war may only be transferred by the detaining power (Canada, in this case) to a power which is a party to the Convention and after the detaining power (Canada) has satisfied itself of the willingness and ability of such transferee power to apply the Convention.” In other words, if Canada suspected the people it was handing over might be mistreated it had a legal obligation not to hand them over.
Hearings into Prisoner Transferred Suspended
On October 14, 2009 the Military Police Complaints Commission hearings into prisoner transfers were adjourned. The following day Canwest News Service reporter Janice Tibbetts wrote that “Commission chairman Peter Tinsley said the hearings are postponed indefinitely because the government has refused to hand over documents that implicated military personnel need to mount their defence.”
Meanwhile, the NDP wants to find out what Prime Minister Harper and then-Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor knew and when they knew it. NDP defence critic Jack Harris told an Ottawa news conference “I can’t conceive that they didn’t know. If they knew, it would have been misleading the House and the people of Canada.”
Harris says he intends to press for answers in parliamentary committee hearings.
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