The list detailing the number of detainees taken into custody by Canadian Forces had grown to 36 pages by late 2007 as government officials tried to find out what happened to the prisoners and determine where they all ended up.

Some of the Afghans, ranging in age from 16 to 75, had been turned over to the U.S. government while others had been transferred to various Afghan detention centres, according to heavily censored records obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

The capture of Afghans in 2002 and in some cases 2005 and 2006 are included, but most of the information on the pages is blacked out. One page has more than 35 instances detailing the capture of individuals.

The list had been produced to help determine the fate of those Afghans detained by Canadian troops, but originally the military’s Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM), responsible for Afghan operations, didn’t want to be involved, according to Foreign Affairs officials.

“I think that is completely inappropriate,” Elissa Golberg, Canada’s representative in Kandahar, responded in a May 16, 2007 exchange of e-mails. “We should be clear that CEFCOM are responsible for the beginning of that database until such time as a detainee is transferred,” she added in another e-mail. After that, the tracking for the database became a Foreign Affairs responsibility.

The documents were made public by Foreign Affairs as part of a legal challenge by Amnesty International and the BC Civil Liberties Association.

The actual number of detainees arrested by Canadian troops is not being released because of “operational security,” according to an e-mail from the Defence Department.

Other nations, such as the U.S., Britain and the Netherlands, release details about the number of detainees captured, either on individual operations or over certain periods of time. New Zealand also has released details about the number of detainees arrested by its special forces, an area that is particularly sensitive in military circles.

Unlike Canada, those nations do not view releasing the number of detainees captured as information that could help the Taliban.

Information provided by Foreign Affairs official Richard Colvin suggests at least 580 individuals were taken by the Canadian military as detainees by the spring of 2007, but that number has grown since. A Foreign Affairs official noted that since 2007, the department had conducted interviews with 150 Afghan detainees to ensure they were being well treated.

Colvin told a House of Commons committee that many of the Afghans detained by Canadian troops were farmers, peasants or people in the “wrong place at the wrong time.” Colvin, who dealt with detainee and intelligence issues in Afghanistan, warned that Canada’s detainee policies had alienated Canadian troops from the population and strengthened the insurgency.

But various military officers, retired and serving, say the detainees were insurgents. Retired general Rick Hillier told the Commons committee that those detained had actually been caught trying to kill Canadian troops and had explosive or gunpowder residue on their hands.

But officials from Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, complained to Canadian military and government representatives on several occasions that troops were detaining people with little evidence linking them to the Taliban, according to records obtained by the Ottawa Citizen. As a result the NDS was releasing those individuals.

In one visit to the NDS detention facility in Kandahar on June 25, 2007, Canadian officials from the Provincial Reconstruction Team found the intelligence agency had released 10 of the 12 detainees recently turned over to them by Canadian troops.

The Defence Department has not been able to explain why the NDS, well-known for its hard-line attitude toward the Taliban, was releasing detainees if the evidence that Canada was providing was so thorough.

On Tuesday, the House of Commons voted in favour of holding a judicial inquiry into how Afghan detainees were treated. The NDP motion, supported by the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois, passed by a vote of 146 to 129.

But it is expected the Conservatives will ignore the non-binding parliamentary motion.

The Conservative government continued its attacks on the opposition parties Tuesday for asking questions about the detainee issue. Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Transport Minister John Baird have accused opposition MPs of being against Canadian soldiers because they are continuing to demand answers about the fate of Afghan detainees.

Conservative MPs also continued their personal attacks on Colvin and how he did his job in Kandahar, claiming that he only left the base once during his time there.

But opposition MPs have pointed out that Colvin volunteered for the Kandahar job after diplomat Glyn Berry was killed in a Taliban suicide attack. Opposition MPs have noted that their questions are focused, not on the soldiers, but on the actions of MacKay, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and senior government officials.

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