Two Cabinet ministers unequivocally declared yesterday they never ignored allegations of detainee abuse in Afghan jails and further insisted the Canadian military did not do anything that would violate international conventions against torture.

Former defence minister Gordon O’Connor said the opposition parties’ accusations of a government cover-up “simply goes beyond common sense,” and the current minister, Peter MacKay, insisted that “no one ever turned a blind eye.”

Mr. O’Connor and Mr. Mac-Kay were testifying at a House of Commons committee on Afghanistan, which heard last month from a senior diplomat, formerly posted in Afghanistan, that senior bureaucrats in Ottawa warned him to keep silent about his concerns about the treatment of Canadian-captured insurgents after they were handed over to local authorities.

“Let me be clear. The government of Canada has never been complicit in torture or any violation of international law by wilfully allowing detainees — Taliban prisoners — taken by the Canadian Forces to be exposed to abuse,” Mr. MacKay said.

Mr. O’Connor, who was defence minister during most of Richard Colvin’s Afghanistan posting in 2006-07, said he never read any of the warnings, nor did anyone ever even hint to him that detainees handed over by Canadian troops may have been abused.

Mr. MacKay and Mr. O’Connor testified at the all-party committee hours after Canada’s top soldier backtracked on his earlier assertions that a beaten and bloodied Afghan was never detained by Canadian troops before he was transferred to local authorities.

General Walter Natynczyk has ordered an investigation into the incident, to find out why he was not told for more than three years and to examine a soldier’s assertion that Afghan police had assaulted previous Taliban suspects.

“I want to correct my statement,” Gen. Natynczyk, Canada’s chief of defence staff, told a news conference in Ottawa. “The individual who was beaten by Afghan police was, in fact, in Canadian custody.”

Gen. Natynczyk said he was reversing himself after hearing for the first time yesterday morning from the section commander who was at the scene of the incident on June 14, 2006.

The commander reported how one of three men in a white van stopped by Canadian soldiers was deemed a suspected Taliban on the basis of his accent and a “false” claim he was from Kandahar City.

Gen. Natynczyk said the soldier’s statement recounted how he had the suspect empty his pockets and lie down on his stomach and how he catalogued all the items and took down his particulars.

“We then photographed the individual prior to handing him over to ensure that if the Afghan National Police did assault him, as had happened in the past, that we would have a visual record of his condition,” the general read from a report.

When the Canadians checked later, they found a group of police beating the suspect with shoes. The troops took him away for medical attention. The man had a scrape on his face.

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  3. Government misleading Canadians on Afghan detainee treatment
  4. MacKay dismisses diplomats’ concerns over Afghan detainee affair
  5. General Says Canada Fears for Afghans

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Filed under: Afghanistan War

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