A suspected Taliban prisoner is searched, handcuffed, and processed by Canadian soldiers in northern Kandahar on May 10, 2006.JOHN D MCHUGH
In the coming days and weeks, the question of what Canada knew and when about the torture of detainees in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007 will be raised in hearings in Ottawa. After a blunt new U.S. assessment of torture in Afghan prisons, Canadians might well ask whether detainees transferred today by the Canadian military are at serious risk of torture. The Canadian government insists that its system for monitoring detainees is working, and perhaps it is; but its frequent falsehoods about Afghan detainees suggest skepticism is in order.
While Canada keeps its human-rights reports on Afghanistan, drafted by government officials on the ground, strictly secret, the U.S. state department posted its 2009 report on its website Thursday for anyone who cares to read it.
The report says about its Afghan ally, in part:
"Torture and abuse methods included, but were not limited to, beating by stick, scorching bar, or iron bar; flogging by cable; battering by rod; electric shock; deprivation of sleep, water, and food; abusive language; sexual humiliation; and rape.An April Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission report stated that torture was commonplace among the majority of law enforcement institutions, especially the police, and that officials used torture when a victim refused to confess to elicit bribes or because of personal enmity. Observers report that some police failed to understand the laws regarding torture."
If that is not enough, "official impunity is pervasive," and the U.S. does not know how many prisons the security police run.
The Canadian government has long pretended that it knew nothing about torture risks in 2006. It emerged this week that Canada was in fact keeping close tabs on a NATO proposal to transform the detention system by giving responsibility for it to the Afghan Army, and taking it away from the feared National Directorate of Security, the secret police. "London, The Hague and Canberra are deeply concerned about the absence of solid legal protections for detainees, which - in the age of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib - imperils domestic support for the Afghanistan mission," said a widely circulated memo from Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin, dated Dec. 4, 2006.
There are two separate and related reasons for concern: the government's refusal to be transparent with Parliament and Canadians at large; and the possibility that the government of Canada is disregarding its legal and moral obligations to protect detainees from known risks of torture.
And consider a third reason for discomfort: that while Parliamentarians and the Military Police Complaints Commission scrutinize the events of 2006 and 2007, the possibility remains that transferred detainees are still facing a high risk of torture.