‘The likelihood was very high’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 6:42 PM - 0 Comments

Stephane Dion, the Liberal MP on the ad hoc committee, offers his take on what he saw in the documents.

Canadian troops had always acted professionally, Dion said, but the government had failed to track the detainees it was transferring. When it finally did send inspectors to check on the detainees, the inspections were inadequate — at times even erratic, he said. ”They were not sufficient to really protect these hundreds of people,” Dion said.

Most concerning to him was the fact that Canadian officials kept transferring troops to Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security despite having concerns about its reputation for abuse. ”It is very troubling that there is a case — not many cases but one case — where an individual has been arrested by us and . . . transferred to NDS for future questioning,” Dion said. “I checked to find out what we may know of this individual and I found out . . . (that) the interrogation by the NDS, gave an allegation by this individual of abuse — that he has been slapped in the face many times and threatened to be killed. Elsewhere, we find out that the Canadian officials confirm that we do not check how the NDS do its questioning,” the former Liberal leader added.

The Commons: Lawrence Cannon's lips are sealed

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 29, 2010 at 6:39 PM - 16 Comments

The Scene. It is entirely possible that when all has been, said, done, investigated and disclosed that Canadian officials will be found to have done a largely admirable job of handling, seizing, transferring and monitoring those individuals detained during this country’s mission in Afghanistan—and that that conclusion will do very little to redeem this government’s various cabinet ministers for the various things they have said about the matter these last four and a half years. To understand why is to get at perhaps the central paradox of so much about this place and these times: the serious, complex nature of modern problems set against the increasingly simplistic, largely evasive way we seem compelled to talk about those problems.

The latest cause for incoherence is a report from the CBC, based on a secret government briefing note, that Canada has been transferring children to Afghan authorities. For sure, this sort of news raises all sorts of complicated questions about law, human rights, war and foreign affairs. For sure, none of these complicated questions will ever properly be addressed here.

Here though stood Thomas Mulcair, the first to state for the benefit of the House a series of varyingly inflammatory questions—”Why is Canada transferring children to the Afghan torturers, NDS? How many children have been arrested? How many children have been transferred? How many children have been tortured?”—to which he couldn’t possibly have expected to receive answers. Continue…

What we now know

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 3:17 PM - 0 Comments

Detainee transfers were halted in May 2009 after an Afghan intelligence officer bragged of torture. Two allegations of mistreatment from later that year have now come to light.

Military Police Complaints Commission hearings have resumed and, while testifying, a Canadian general defended Afghanistan’s NDS (“these are not torture chambers per se”). After reviewing new documents, the CBC figures Canada has transferred in excess of 400 detainees to Afghan authorities. The Hill Times reports that the government was preparing in 2007 to deal with difficult questions.

Meanwhile, the Brits have completed their own review of detainee policy and practice.

Take their word for it

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 5, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Two new allegations of detainee abuse come to light in British court proceedings.

Canadian officials say the abuse allegations, from last summer, were promptly investigated and found groundless: An internal probe by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security exonerated the NDS interrogator involved. They contend the handling of the allegations demonstrates that Canadian safeguards in detecting claims of abuse and demanding investigations are working…

In a series of exchanges with The Globe and Mail, both the Canadian Forces and the Foreign Affairs Department declined to provide any substantiation or documents, from either the initial follow-up visit that produced the allegations of abuse or the subsequent NDS investigation that dismissed them, to buttress the conclusion that the Afghan detainees had lied about being beaten and that the interrogators had been properly investigated and cleared.

'Further questioning'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 7:00 PM - 13 Comments

In his letter to the Afghanistan committee late last week, Gen. Walter Natynczyk wrote that “Canadian Forces do not transfer individuals for the purposes of gathering information.” In a letter sent today, the NDP’s Paul Dewar and Jack Harris have asked Gen. Natynczyk to clarify this point.

Specifically, Messrs. Dewar and Harris want to know how to square the general’s statement with an October 2007 document they’ve obtained. The document is described as a transfer report and it reads, in part:

“During the interview conducted, it is believe (sic) that all the detainees were deceptive and they have a better knowledge on TB (Taliban) activity in their area. Based upon the above, it is recommended that [names of detainees] be transferred to the National Directorate of Security (NOS) for further questioning”.

The NDP is not making said document public as yet. But Mr. Dewar did raise it during committee hearings last week. He presented it to Malgarai Ahmadshah, a former translator for the Canadian Forces, and Mr. Ahmadshah explained the document as follows. Continue…

The risk

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 7, 2010 at 11:32 AM - 34 Comments

CBC gets hold of a summer 2009 warning about Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security.

The Conservative government was warned last summer that working with the Afghan secret police would lead to allegations Canada condoned abuse and that Canadians could face legal liability for complicity in torture. The information, contained in a candid top-level government memo shared with CBC News, shows that officials were worried that Canada’s relationship with the Afghan National Directorate of Security was risky — and possibly illegal — even while the government was defending it.

The document warns that the directorate, or NDS, is so secretive, even Canada and its allies are in the dark about much of what it does. The NDS has wider powers of arrest and detention than most intelligence agencies, the memo says, and as a result, “there is considerable scope for the use of improper methods.” Engaging with the NDS “entails a degree of risk to Canadian interests,” it adds.

Terry Milewski’s full report is here.

In between the redactions

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 26, 2010 at 1:23 AM - 16 Comments

Sifting through Thursday’s documents, the Canadian Press leads with the account of a soldier who claimed detainee had been executed by Afghan authorities—a claim the Defence Minister’s spokesman dismisses to the Globe—but there is more.

An April 2007 report by a Foreign Affairs official who joined a Correctional Service of Canada staffer on an “exhaustive inspection” of the notorious National Directorate of Security facility in Kandahar City also cites claims of abuse. ”To our surprise, even though NDS officers accompanied us throughout the visit, two prisoners nonetheless came forward with complaints of mistreatment,” the official wrote…

A February 2008 memo prepared at National Defence Headquarters by Capt. S.M. Moore noted “significant shortcomings and areas for concern with regard to the conduct of (military police) operations in Afghanistan.” Many of the problems “are systemic” and result from a lack of oversight, it says. The memo notes a survey conducted “in theatre revealed that soldiers stated they had witnessed the abuse of detainees” – yet the information was not immediately passed on to military police.

It adds that on Feb. 15, 2008, two unknown individuals approached a female military police member when she exited the shower, grabbed her arms, pushed her against the shower wall and told her: “MPs mind your own business.”

What might have been

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 1:52 PM - 14 Comments

Canadian Press delves into a proposed, but ultimately rejected, plan to put the Afghan army in charge of detainees.

NATO allies lobbied Afghan’s president for a separate legal framework to handle prisoners captured around Kandahar in late 2006 but those efforts “went nowhere,” say internal memos. The records outline an early strategy of the Canadian government as it faced pressure from the International Red Cross and others to take more responsibility for captured Taliban fighters…

The idea was to let the fledgling Afghan army operate a detention facility built by the U.S. rather than rely on either the National Directorate of Security or the country’s shaky correctional system. The proposal included a demand that Afghanistan create a separate legal framework for terror suspects, similar to the U.S. system of military tribunals. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was pressed to carve out “a new detainee policy that would have made the Afghan army responsible for prisoners and created a new class of detainees, but efforts have gone nowhere,” says a Dec. 4, 2006, memo.

'The Canadians saw with their own eyes'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 23, 2009 at 1:04 PM - 16 Comments

A former Afghan prison warden talks to Canwest.

Some Taliban prisoners who were transferred two or three years ago to Sarpoza Prison by Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security bore signs that they had been tortured, the former warden told Canwest News Service on Monday. But Canadian soldiers went to great lengths to try to ensure that prisoners who they had detained and handed over to the NDS were not abused, said Abdul Qadar Khan Popal.

“At the time, John, from the Canadian side, was looking after prisoners that were in NDS custody and was always complaining to the NDS because the prisoners had told him they were tortured,” Popal said. “He tried to bring them out of NDS custody and into Sarpoza as quickly as he could because he understood the situation.

“The Canadians saw with their own eyes and asked the prisoners if they had any complaints. The Canadians minded very strongly when the prisoners complained and advised us not to mistreat anyone. The explained to us about human rights and told us how to treat prisoners, especially political ones.”