statism watch

Busted.

Flashback: Canada’s troops investigated for Afghan abuse | Colvin disputes witnesses’ detainee testimony | Tories sabotage Afghan committee meeting | Canada ‘defended’ torturer | Ottawa won’t release Afghan torture documents | Top general’s Afghan detainee reversal hikes pressure for public inquiry | Richard Colvin’s Afghan torture memos reveal government concealed prisoner access issues | Torture claims unreliable, officials say, despite having found evidence of torture | MPs vote public inquiry into Afghan detainees, Tories ignore majority motion | Torture claims weren’t probed, official testified | Harper government changes tune on Afghan prisoner issue | Colvin’s testimony true: former Afghan MP | David Mulroney testifies war confused issue of torture | Hillier says he saw no credible reports of torture | Afghan torture emails reached MacKay’s office | Opposition wants documentation prior to government torture rebuttal, PM cries foul | Canadian officials discussed torture in 2006 | Canada shamed on Afghan prisoner torture | Canada ignored torture warnings: Diplomat | Military lawyer stonewalls on Afghan torture claims | Ottawa was warned Afghan detainees might be tortured | Military commission suspends torture hearings, gags witness | Torture probe delayed; Tories deny gagging witness | Federal court limits Afghan detainee torture probe | Watchdog rejects government bid to delay Afghan detainee inquiry | Ottawa moves to block Afghanistan detainee torture hearings again | Bid to Block Afghan Detainee Inquiry Slammed | What Ottawa doesn’t want you to know: Government was told detainees faced ‘extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial’

Murray Brewster, The Canadian Press
December 21, 2009

OTTAWA–Peter MacKay, Stockwell Day and Gordon O’Connor, then senior cabinet ministers, met the head of the International Red Cross in the fall of 2006 as the humanitarian organization tried to focus Canada’s attention on alleged abuses in Afghan prisons, The Canadian Press has learned.

Precisely what Jakob Kellenberger told the three, as well as Robert Greenhill, then president of the Canadian International Development Agency, in the Sept. 26, 2006 meeting is blanketed by diplomatic secrecy.

MacKay was then foreign affairs minister, O’Connor was at defence and Day was public safety minister overseeing Corrections Canada officers in Kandahar.

While details of the meeting are secret, enough was said about Afghanistan to generate a report from MacKay’s office a month later that flagged the Red Cross president’s concerns.

The contents of the report, one of thousands of documents filed in the Military Police Complaints Commission investigation of torture allegations, are censored.

The email was titled: “Re: meeting with ICRC president re detention issues.”

The Conservative government has insisted it never received direct warnings about possible Afghan torture of Canadian-transferred prisoners, although MacKay has conceded that general concerns were heard almost from the moment the government took office in early 2006.

The fact the Red Cross meeting took place raises further questions about what the federal government knew and the kind of warnings officials received in the critical early months.

Officially, the Red Cross would only say the talks focused on topics including Afghanistan, humanitarian law in modern conflicts and co-operation with Canada.

Unofficially, sources in Geneva said the international agency, whose functions include monitoring the treatment of prisoners, was growing frustrated over Canada’s tardy notification of its handover of captured suspected Taliban to Afghan authorities. The delay could often be as long as 34 days, making it difficult to track detainees.

A spokesman for MacKay referred questions to the foreign affairs department, which declined to comment.

“Recognizing the confidential nature of the relationship between the ICRC and the (government of Canada), we are not in a position to comment on any meetings between the two parties,” Katherine Heath-Eves wrote in an email on Saturday.

Liberal MP Bob Rae said these revelations speak again to the government’s credibility.

“It confirms that the ministers involved were front and centre and their continuing denials that they were unaware of any issues becomes less and less credible,” he said. He said the government has to come out with uncensored documents, to clear the air.

“Everybody’s arguing in the dark right now.”

The Red Cross is bound by international convention not to discuss with other countries what it saw in Afghan prisons. But it could drop broad hints, as officials did at two meetings with Canadian military and civilian officials in Kandahar in May and June 2006.

During those meetings, which took place a year before the federal government acted to protect detainees, officials issued veiled but insistent warnings about torture in Afghan jails. There were at least two other meetings with the Red Cross – one in Ottawa, the other in Geneva – to discuss prisoners.

Diplomat-whistleblower Richard Colvin was also sounding an alarm at the time, although the government has dismissed his reports as vague and based on hearsay.

But the meeting in Ottawa in September 2006 would – at the very least – have focused the attention of cabinet ministers on the issue of prisoners.

It is evident what was said caught the attention of government officials because it generated not only the follow-up report from MacKay’s office, but in a November 2006 meeting with the Red Cross there was a clear change in messaging.

Uncensored talking points viewed on a confidential basis by The Canadian Press say the humanitarian agency was told Canada was “reflecting on how to engage more proactively” with the Afghans over prisoners. The consideration included “asking the government of Afghanistan for permission to visit the prisons” and to discuss the entire process of handling detainees, said the Nov. 20, 2006 document.

The suggestion of an ad hoc monitoring regime was at the time welcome news to the Red Cross, which had in 2005 and 2006 delivered a handful of diplomatic notes to the Canadian embassy in Kabul related to prisoner concerns.

It was only on May 3, 2007 that Ottawa signed a new deal with the Afghan government, giving Canadians the right to check on the prisoners they captured.

Source | See also under Torture: Canada’s troops investigated for Afghan abuse | Colvin disputes witnesses’ detainee testimony | Tories sabotage Afghan committee meeting | Eyewitness Recounts Forced Organ Removal in China | Canada ‘defended’ torturer | Ottawa won’t release Afghan torture documents | RCMP had no grounds to use Taser on N.W.T. girl: report | Top general’s Afghan detainee reversal hikes pressure for public inquiry | U.S. police taser 10-year-old | Richard Colvin’s Afghan torture memos reveal government concealed prisoner access issues | Torture claims unreliable, officials say, despite having found evidence of torture | MPs vote public inquiry into Afghan detainees, Tories ignore majority motion | Torture claims weren’t probed, official testified | Harper government changes tune on Afghan prisoner issue | Colvin’s testimony true: former Afghan MP | David Mulroney testifies war confused issue of torture | Hillier says he saw no credible reports of torture | Afghan torture emails reached MacKay’s office | UK: Rights watchdog reveals Pakistani spies pressed by British to torture detainees | Opposition wants documentation prior to government torture rebuttal, PM cries foul | Canadian officials discussed torture in 2006 | Canada shamed on Afghan prisoner torture | Canada ignored torture warnings: Diplomat | Guantanamo won’t close by January: Obama | Israelis Want a Pain Ray of Their Own | UK soldier testifies comrades beat Iraqi to death | Military lawyer stonewalls on Afghan torture claims | U.S. court denies Maher Arar’s appeal | UK: Move to withhold evidence in MI5/MI6 torture collusion claim | U.S. artists slam use of music in Guantanamo interrogations | Ottawa was warned Afghan detainees might be tortured | Military commission suspends torture hearings, gags witness | Torture probe delayed; 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This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 1:29 am and is filed under accountability, afghanistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.