Canadian diplomat: Abuse ’standard operating procedure’ in Afghanistan

Right now, the hottest name in Canada is Richard Colvin. The former second-in-command at the Canadian embassy in Kabul testified before a House of Commons committee that all Afghan prisoners that Canadians handed over to the Afghanistan government were abused. Not some, all. Colvin also testified that he tried to bring the abuse to the government’s attention roughly a year ago, but got nowhere. He claimed that abuse of prisoners was the “standard operating procedure” in Afghanistan.

The Canadian government’s response? From the Globe and Mail:

…the Harper government tried to undermine the credibility of revelations made by one of its own officials.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay led the charge during Question Period today, saying the testimony from Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin can’t be believed.

MacKay said, “There has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian forces.” He was roundly booed by other members of the House.

The issue of Afghan detainees is not new for Canadians. In 2007, thirty detainees interviewed by the Globe and Mail claimed to have been abused at the hands of Afghan security forces after being handed over by Canadian soldiers. The allegations caused an uproar and put the Canadian government further on the defensive, as it was already under fire for claiming that the Red Cross would have alerted Canada of any wrongdoing in the prisoner transfers. The Red Cross stated that they did not. The Canadian government was forced to come up with a new detainee transfer policy – one that allowed the Canadian Forces full access to jails in order to assure that the detainees were being treated justly.

And now comes Richard Colvin.

From the Toronto Star:

Colvin wrote 16 reports to his superiors in Afghanistan and Ottawa warning that Canada’s detainee policy was seriously flawed because it included no way to follow up on prisoners or investigate prison conditions. Once the troubling findings were first brought to light in newspaper reports in the spring of 2007, Colvin said diplomats were instructed not to keep written records of any talk of torture by senior Ottawa officials.

“At first we were mostly ignored, but by April 2007 we were receiving written messages from the senior Canadian government co-ordinator for Afghanistan to the effect that we should be quiet and do what we were told,” he said.

In an interview with the National Post, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon supported MacKay’s statement that Colvin’s allegations are questionable, asserting that “the government has never denied having concerns about the treatment of people in the Afghan prison system.” That’s not entirely true. Cannon was the one who told the House in April, 2006, “under the agreement the Red Cross will supervise the detainees in the Afghan prisons. If they were to be transferred to a third party, and why they would be is beyond me because we are giving Afghans to Afghanistan, then the Red Cross would monitor this. If there were a problem, the Red Cross would inform us.”

Canada’s opposition parties were quick to defend Colvin, and have called for a public inquiry into the entire episode, but the Tories reject that idea. MacKay’s continued assertion on Canadian television this afternoon has been that Colvin’s main source of this information is the Taliban. “Until you have proven allegations, you cannot act,” MacKay told the CBC’s Evan Solomon. But considering that the Canadian government changed the detainee transfer program in the first place does suggest that there was some concern over the treatment of the prisoners. In2008, “The Federal Court ruled… that “very real concerns” exist over whether the Canadian Forces have done enough to ensure that detainees they transfer to Afghan prisons are not abused.”

Perhaps a public enquiry is due. Canadians need to know whether our country knowingly sent prisoners – some, Colvin alleges, who were innocent – to be tortured.