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Your editorial The Charter's Breaking Point (Jan. 29) suggests the danger of applying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to overseas military action. Last June, Britain's Law Lords decided that human rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights - via the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act - applied when British troops in Iraq beat an Iraqi civilian detainee to death. The House of Lords' decision took into account the operational context. Indeed, it found that the rights applied only in detention, not in active combat scenarios.

There have been few subsequent complaints that this decision hampers military effectiveness, and I fail to see the problem with applying the Charter in similar ways to de-

tainees taken by Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

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