Almost from the start of its big 2006 push into southern Afghanistan, Canada's senior military and government officials were warned of “serious, imminent and alarming” problems with handing over captured prisoners to that country's notorious jails.
This politically explosive revelation, which emerged Wednesday at an inquiry into whether Canada knowingly put Afghan detainees at risk of torture, shows a Canadian diplomat started red-flagging detainee transfers in May, 2006, a full year before Ottawa acted to bolster safeguards for them.
It wasn't until May, 2007, that the Harper government overhauled its prisoner transfer agreement with the Afghan government, negotiating a new one that allowed for follow-up visits to ensure detainees weren't tortured.
Before then, the Conservative government fiercely defended the treatment of Afghans they had handed over to Kabul's security services for interrogation, with then-defence minister Gordon O'Connor saying if there was something wrong the Red Cross would have informed Canada.
But diplomat Richard Colvin, who's defying Department of Justice lawyers' efforts to stop him from testifying, Wednesday revealed to a Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry that he first sounded the alarm on detainees nearly three and a half years ago.
Mr. Colvin's statement – delivered through an affidavit that government national security censors only cleared for release Wednesday– said that he began raising the alert on this matter while posted to Afghanistan in May, 2006.
That was just three months after Canada moved a battle group of soldiers to the southern Afghanistan province of Kandahar, a hotbed of Taliban insurgency. It was then that combat significantly intensified for the Canadians, as did the capture of prisoners.
Mr. Colvin, who today is deputy head of intelligence at the Canadian embassy in Washington, said he filed his first report following a visit to Kandahar's Sarpoza prison where former Canadian-captured prisoners were held and said he consulted the soldier who was deputy commander of Canada's provincial reconstruction before doing so.
“Judging these problems regarding Afghan detainees to be serious, imminent and alarming, I made investigations and detailed my findings formally in my reporting from the [provincial reconstruction team],” Mr. Colvin said in his affidavit.
The May 26 report was sent to Department of Foreign Affairs staff, the senior military chain of command as well as senior Department of National Defence officials. It's not known whether it reached the eyes of Mr. O'Connor or former foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay, but Mr. Colvin said he made a point of sending this missive to Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier, then-commander of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command including all Canadian Forces deployed abroad.
Mr. Colvin quickly followed this up with a second report in June, 2006, on “the risk of torture and/or actual torture of Afghan detainees.” He said this second missive was based on “a source or sources that I assessed at the time, and assess today, as highly credible.”
Justice lawyers, who insist they are not acting on instructions from the Harper government, had tried to quash Mr. Colvin's summons to the probe, saying his testimony would be irrelevant to the matter at hand.
Mr. Colvin filed the affidavit to disprove them, but was forced to be circumspect about what he said for fear of running afoul of Canada's anti-terrorism law, which can jail Canadians for breaching national secrets.
He sent about 15 additional reports on the matter before his Afghanistan posting ended in the fall of 2007. These include a June, 2007, report based on “first-hand reports of torture and personally saw evidence of injuries related to torture suffered by detainees.”
Ottawa has never accepted allegations that prisoners transferred to the Afghans were tortured but has twice halted transfers after being confronted with evidence that detainees were mistreated.
Mr. Colvin's disclosure is the most compelling information to come out of an on-again, off-again inquiry into detainees, which will now stand adjourned again for about six months while the Military Police Complaints Commission appeals a September federal court ruling that narrowed the scope of the inquiry. Since 2007, it's has been trying to probe the detainee issue but it has run into a string of roadblocks erected by federal lawyers that have delayed and severely restricted its inquiry.
NDP defence critic Jack Harris called on Defence Minister Peter MacKay to shed more light on Mr. Colvin's revelation. “We need to know exactly what the Defence Minister knew and when he knew it. We've been told for years that no complaints had been raised about the handling of prisoners, and now we have a top diplomat saying he has been complaining since 2006.”
