Absurdity, here and there

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 9, 2012 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

The latest squabble over Afghan detainees, national security and access to information involves hairdos.

Meanwhile, Hamid Karzai is alleging abuse and demanding that all detainees under NATO control be handed over.

American officials, caught off guard by the president’s order, scrambled to figure out the source of the allegations. Now they have at least part of an answer: the Afghan commission that documented the abuses appears to have focused mainly on the side of the prison run by Afghan authorities, not the American-run part, according to interviews with American and Afghan officials.

Mr. Karzai was, in essence, demanding that the Americans cede control of a prison to Afghan authorities to stop abuses being committed by Afghan authorities.

Detainees taken by Canadian Forces are presently being transferred to the Americans.

Goodbye to the NDS?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 15, 2011 at 10:18 AM - 0 Comments

An interesting exchange—and perhaps even a straight answer—from Question Period yesterday.

Hélène Laverdière. Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Can the minister confirm that none of the Afghan detainees transferred by Canada are still in the hands of the national directorate of security—the NDS—an organization known for abusing detainees?

Peter MacKay. Mr. Speaker, I can confirm that is the case.

And so we come full circle

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:28 PM - 0 Comments

John Baird informed the House this morning that detainees in Afghanistan will now be transferred to American forces.

Mr. Speaker, with the combat mission in Afghanistan now complete, I am pleased to inform the House that our government has signed an arrangement with the Obama administration to facilitate the transfer of detainees captured by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan to U.S. custody at the detention facility in Parwan. The U.S. operates this facility with full agreement of the Afghan government and detainees can be prosecuted under Afghan law. Canadian officials will continue to be present on the ground to monitor all Canadian transferred detainees until they are sentenced or released.

It was concerns about how the United States treated detainees—and the example of Abu Ghraib—that led to the decision to transfer detainees to Afghan custody in the first place.

Compelling evidence

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 8:45 AM - 3 Comments

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has released a report into the treatment of detainees by Afghan authorities.

UNAMA’s detention observation found compelling evidence that 125 detainees (46 percent) of the 273 detainees interviewed who had been in NDS detention experienced interrogation techniques at the hands of NDS officials that constituted torture, and that torture is practiced systematically in a number of NDS detention facilities throughout Afghanistan … More than one third of the 117 conflict-related detainees UNAMA interviewed who had been in ANP detention experienced treatment that amounted to torture or to other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment…

UNAMA’s detention observation included interviews with 89 detainees who reported the involvement of international military forces either alone or together with Afghan forces in their capture and transfer to NDS or ANP custody. UNAMA found compelling evidence that 19 of these 89 detainees were tortured in NDS custody and three in ANP custody.

The full report is here. As the Globe notes, one detainee, interviewed in March, claims a separate process for those transferred by Canadian forces. Continue…

Meanwhile, at the Federal Court

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 30, 2011 at 12:27 PM - 5 Comments

A government appeal to limit the scope of an investigation by the Military Police Complaints Commission has been rejected.

A Federal Court has dismissed an application that would, among other things, strike the testimony of diplomat-whistleblower Richard Colvin and block thousands of pages of documents from being used by the Military Police Complaints Commission…

Justice Department lawyers argued the commission had no authority to call witnesses who were not members of the military, such as Colvin, who said he repeatedly warned both Foreign Affairs and the Defence Department about possible prison abuse … The government also claimed that the watchdog, created in the aftermath of the Somalia scandal to monitor the conduct of military police, exceeded its mandate by issuing summonses for documents.

Reading the documents: Adventures in redaction

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 3:37 PM - 4 Comments

The Afghan detainee documents tabled last month can be viewed in their entirety here. Herein, a look at some of the noteworthy files and disclosures contained therein.

POA 0007 is an overview of the situation in Afghanistan circa 2005. It is most notable for what was previously redacted and now disclosed: references to torture, abuse and various problems with the Afghan justice system.

POA 0014, similarly, is an overview of the situation in Afghanistan circa 2006. Where redactions in the “summary” section of POA 0007 have been removed, they remain in POA 0014. But what’s behind one of these redactions seems to have been revealed four years ago by the Globe. And connecting those dots, it would seem that what has been unredacted by the panel of arbiters in POA 0007 remains redacted in POA 0014.

POA 0010 is an enlightening read: eight pages blacked out in their entirety.

See previously: Reading the documents, DFAIT 10, What the detainees said and Notification, policy and concerns.

Reading the documents: Notification, policy and concerns

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 27, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 5 Comments

The documents tabled last week can be viewed in their entirety here. Herein, a series of posts on some of the noteworthy files and disclosures contained therein.

Documents marked DFAIT36 through DFAIT116 cover the notification of the Red Cross (and later the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission) in regards to those detained and/or transferred by the Canadian Forces between June 2006 and May 2007.

DFAIT36 outlines concerns expressed by the International Committee of the Red Cross in June 2006 about delays in notification. DFAIT75 covers concerns expressed in December 2006. DFAIT145 covers concerns raised in May 2007.

In DFAIT126, dated September 2006, Richard Colvin suggests Canada should be doing its own monitoring of detainees in Afghan custody.

DFAIT141 covers a wide discussion of detainee policy, while DFAIT147 and DFAIT149, both from May 2007, are drafts of new policies.

DFAIT151 covers a number of issues and proposals raised in the wake of the Globe and Mail’s April 2007 reporting.

This is the week that was

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, June 26, 2011 at 4:18 PM - 0 Comments

The Conservatives were bashful. And mysterious. And succinct.

The House talked and talked and talked and talked and talked about sending Canada Post employees back to work. And then it stopped.

The government tabled the Afghan detainee documents. Which you can read more about here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Continue…

Reading the documents: What the detainees said

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 24, 2011 at 4:54 PM - 0 Comments

The documents tabled this week can be viewed in their entirety here. Herein, a series of posts on some of the noteworthy files and disclosures contained therein.

With the exception of the aforementioned DFAIT10, the files between DFAIT2 and DFAIT34 cover updates on the transfer of detainees between June 2007 and November 2009.

The memos marked DFAIT3, DFAIT4, DFAIT5, DFAIT7, DFAIT9, DFAIT11, DFAIT16, DFAIT19, DFAIT30 and DFAIT33 include allegations of mistreatment.

Revealing inconsistency

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 24, 2011 at 10:37 AM - 0 Comments

Terry Milewski notes two redaction curiosities in the latest raft of documents.

Still, the “international relations” exception seems to be extremely flexible. Ditto, “national security.” In fact, the definition of what’s important to censor and what isn’t seems to be both flexible and constantly shifting. In another baffling example, there’s a document which says a prisoner was deprived of sleep for [X] days. We must not know how many days! And, yet, we do! In another version of the same document, we can see that it was … four days. Somehow, the national security of both Canada and Afghanistan seems unaffected by this revelation.

As I detailed last year, there exists a field report that has been released in two different versions: one in which the word “assault” has been redacted, one in which the word has been disclosed. The document has actually been released on three separate occasions: first with the word redacted, then with the word unredacted and then again with the word redacted.

The work wasn’t done

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 24, 2011 at 8:39 AM - 0 Comments

While the Prime Minister’s Office apparently declines to say whether the opposition leaders were asked if they wished to proceed with the detainee document review, it is clear the panel of judges was not done reviewing some of the material—including documents identified by the government as being subject to cabinet confidence.

Parliament’s dissolution meant that the judges no longer had any committee of MPs to turn to for input. Post-election, the judges were looking to discuss their findings with a renewed committee of MPs, but no such committee was formed. “We were advised by the government that it is unlikely that the [committee] will be renewed,” the judges wrote in their June 15 letter.

So they handed over what they had done and left some work dangling – including documents over which the government had claimed absolute secrecy. “We did not undertake a review of the government’s claims of cabinet confidence since we received confirmation of these claims only before Parliament was dissolved,” the judges wrote. “Nor did we complete our review of all of the government’s claims of solicitor-client privilege.”

Greg Weston reviews how we got here.

The Commons: Two words to say so much

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 6:48 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. John Baird seemed to stumble before catching himself.

“Mr. Speaker, our government is, and has always been,” he said this afternoon in response to a question from the NDP side, “committed to handling Afghan… Taliban prisoners in accordance with our international obligations.”

Taliban prisoners is indeed the preferred honorific. And four years after the treatment of those transferred to Afghan authorities by the Canadian Forces became a matter of public concern—four years after allegations that Canadian-transferred detainees had been punched, choked, whipped and electrocuted by Afghan officials—much of the government’s response to so many questions of human rights, war, torture and parliamentary privilege would seem to involve this two-word phrase.

Continue…

Reading the documents: DFAIT 10

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 11:45 AM - 0 Comments

The documents tabled today can be viewed in their entirety here. Herein, a series of posts on some of the noteworthy files and disclosures contained therein.

Included in yesterday’s release is a file marked DFAIT 10. Dated from November 2007, it is a memo to the Foreign Affairs Minister (Lawrence Cannon at the time) about the impending release of government documents as part of the legal case brought by Amnesty International and the BC Civil Liberties Association. Specifically, the memo attempts to address what will be disclosed as a result and what “communications considerations” should be undertaken.

The evidence contained in the documents was summarized for the minister as follows (the unredacted portion reprinted here in square brackets).

The material to be released is extensive. Cumulatively the documents leave one with the impression of [flawed Afghan judicial system and of detention facilities that fall well below UN standards]. In addition, the assembled material may seem to suggest that Government of Canada messaging on the detainees issues for the last twelve months has been out of sync with reporting from the field (DND, CSC and DFAIT). This will present significant political and communications challenges.

Tortured math

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 10:35 AM - 0 Comments

When Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird turned up at the podium yesterday afternoon, he announced as follows.

Just now, on behalf of the Government of Canada, I tabled documents relating to Canadian-transferred Taliban prisoners reviewed as part of the Ad Hoc Committee process in the last Parliament.  This concludes that process which has cost Canadian taxpayers over $12 million.

As it turns out, the cost for the parliamentary review—in which documents were reviewed by an ad hoc committee of MPs and a panel of former judges—was something closer to $4.5 million.

Baird said the process cost $12 million, but a government official later admitted that amount includes the cost of producing and redacting documents for two proceedings at the Military Police Complaints Commission. The commission spent months conducting hearings on a complaint by Amnesty International. The cost to find and redact documents was $10 million, of which $7.5 million is due to the commission hearings, Baird spokesman Chris Day wrote in an email. ”The remaining $2 [million] relate to remuneration and disbursements associated with the work of the panel,” he wrote.

The early reviews

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 8:51 AM - 0 Comments

The Canadian Press reviews some of what was disclosed in yesterday’s document release.

— Various 2007 reports filed by Canadian officials in Afghanistan who interviewed detainees transferred by Canadian Forces noted allegations of beatings, sleep deprivation and verbal abuse;

— Human rights observers were denied access at least five times that year to Kandahar facilities run by the notorious National Directorate of Security

More from Postmedia, the Globe, Star and CBC.

Reading the documents

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 11:24 PM - 0 Comments

The documents tabled today can be viewed in their entirety here. Some of these memos appear to have been made public previously, but starting here, a series of posts on some of the noteworthy files and disclosures contained therein.

Files POA 0424 through POA 0437—see the second batch of files—appear to contain memos drafted by Richard Colvin between June 2, 2006 and April 20, 2007. These are memos would have been filed before the Globe and Mail’s first major story on the handling of detainees was published on April 23, 2007.

The panel of arbiters has unredacted references to Governor Asadullah Khalid in POA 0433 and POA 0434. (References to Governor Khalid are also revealed in POA 0148, dated April 28, 2007.)

In POA 0437, a reference to “suspicions of maltreatment by the NDS” has been disclosed.

POA 0439 through POA 0464 contain memos that followed the Globe’s report. References to Governor Khalid have been unredacted in POA 0454 and POA 0455.

POA 0465 is Mr. Colvin’s final report on the conclusion of his 18 months in Afghanistan.

‘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 documents

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 5:09 PM - 0 Comments

The 4,000 pages of detainee documents have now been released to reporters.

The first batch (99 files via Scribd) is available here.

The second batch (274 files via Google Docs) is available here.

‘This concludes the work of the ad hoc committee’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 4:13 PM - 0 Comments

The official release from Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird on the tabling of documents related to the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan. In speaking with reporters as well he left the distinct impression that the government is not interested in reinstating the review process.

“The documents tabled today show what our government has been telling Canadians all along,” said Minister Baird. “Canada is committed to upholding our international obligations, including the handling and transfer of Taliban prisoners in full accordance with our international obligations.”

All of the documents that were prioritized by the ad hoc committee of parliamentarians and sent to the Panel of Arbiters for decisions on redactions have now been released … After 12 months and over $12 million, no credible allegations against Canadian Armed Forces members or Canadian officials were found. The vast majority of redactions were left intact by the Panel of Arbiters. This concludes the process.

Where are the documents? (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 1:38 PM - 0 Comments

Documents related to the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan and the report of the panel of arbiters will be tabled in the House shortly after Question Period today. Ministers John Baird and Peter MacKay are then to deliver remarks to the media and reporters have been summoned to the Foreign Affairs building for a briefing at 4pm. Stephane Dion, the Liberal member of the parliamentary review committee, has his own media availability scheduled for 4pm as well.

Ahead of this afternoon’s disclosures, whatever they may be, Mr. Dion has already raised one concern with the process.

He added, however, that he is very concerned about how the government has already received the report from the panel, giving it ample time to prepare a communications plan. He said opposition MPs won’t see the report until several hours before it is publicly tabled in the Commons Wednesday afternoon. “It was not a report that was supposed to be the property of the government,” Mr. Dion said.

For the story of how we got to this point, including many of the documents already made publicly available, feel free to consult the Colvin Encyclopedia.

Where are the documents? (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 20, 2011 at 1:39 PM - 9 Comments

Sources tell the Sun that the first disclosures from the Afghan detainee document review committee will be released Wednesday.

If this does indeed come to pass, the next question will be whether the review committee will be reinstated. It was established with the agreement of the leaders of the Conservatives, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois. I’ve asked both the Conservative and Liberal sides whether they are respectively interested in restarting the process, but both have so far avoided answering the question directly.

Where are the documents?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 4:24 PM - 38 Comments

On April 14, midway through the election campaign, the two judges involved in the review of Afghan detainee documents wrote to Messrs Harper, Ignatieff and Duceppe to explain that nothing could be released because the House had been dissolved and, thus, the ad hoc committee of MPs no longer existed. Both the Conservative and Liberal sides expressed their desire to see documents released, but nothing more came of it.

On May 6, four days after the vote, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed that the government supported the release of the judges’ report.

On May 17, John Baird, at that time still the government House leader, stated that a number of documents “should be able to be tabled in short order.”

The 41st Parliament was opened on June 3 and has now conducted nine days of business. Nothing has been tabled. In response to questions about when something might be tabled, the Prime Minister’s Office says that the “government will honour its commitment to table the report.”

Assuming the House must be in session for anything to be tabled, there are four days next week to do this before the House breaks for the summer, not due to return until Sept. 19.

Rights and democracy

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, June 10, 2011 at 3:33 PM - 41 Comments

Speaking at this weekend’s Conservative convention, Jason Kenney explains the Conservative ethos.

“We don’t depend on the bloated bureaucracies of the nanny state; we thrive on our freedom and are upheld by the law,” he said. “We don’t assume that history began in the Summer of Love; we honour a tradition reaching back to the Magna Carta … Our adversaries were focused on the obsessions of the chattering classes – like Taliban prisoners – rather than the practical bread-and-butter concerns of hard-working families.”

Though neither are as old as the Magna Carta (established in 1215), both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted in 1948) and the Geneva Conventions (agreed to in 1949) predate the Summer of Love (1967).

Article 39 of the Magna Carta is translated as follows. Continue…

The first test of the new Parliament

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 at 1:41 PM - 14 Comments

After announcing yesterday that Parliament will resume business on June 2, John Baird was asked about the state of the Afghan detainee document review. He responded as follows.

There’s a good number that, I understand, should be able to be tabled in short order. That should proceed. Obviously the agreement that we had in place was with the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberal party. Obviously the two Bloc members were defeated and there’s only one of the Liberals so that’ll be something that, as government House leader, working with the Minister of Justice, we’ll have to discuss.

See previously: The detained documents