Canadian officer testifies abuse of one Afghan detainee reported to military
Mike Blanchfield and Andrew Mayeda, CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, May 04, 2007
OTTAWA - Afghan police beat up a prisoner given to them by the Canadian Forces, according to the first evidence of abuse of a detainee transferred by Canada to Afghanistan which emerged Thursday in documents filed in the Federal Court.
Col. Steve Noonan, a former task force commander in Afghanistan, disclosed the incident in a sworn affidavit filed with the court as part of the government's response to a legal challenge by Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association to stop all further transfers of detainees by the Canadian military to the Afghan government.
Noonan's disclosure comes after repeated denials by the Conservative government that it had no specific examples that any detainee transferred by Canadian troops to Afghan authorities was later subject to abuse or torture. The detainee issue has mushroomed into a major political problem for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several of his Conservative cabinet ministers.
Harper continued Thursday to dismiss allegations of prisoner abuse and blamed his political opponents for making it an issue.
"This is based on nothing more than a handful of unsubstantiated allegations from Taliban prisoners and I think, quite frankly, it has detracted unnecessarily from the good work Canadian men and women are doing in the field in Afghanistan under dangerous circumstances," the prime minister told a news conference in Mission, B.C.
But court documents, including a transcript of Noonan's cross-examination earlier this week, already filed in Federal Court revealed that a prisoner captured by Canadian troops was abused by the Afghans.
"In this case, the CF learned that the detainee had been beaten by the local ANP," Noonan said in his affidavit, using the acronym for Afghan national police. "When we learned of this, they approached the local ANP and requested that the detainee be given to them."
The Afghans turned the prisoner over to the Canadians who then gave him to provincial Afghan police authorities.
When Amnesty lawyer Paul Champ tried to get more details on the incident - when it happened, what injuries were sustained, whether the Afghan police were charged - federal lawyer J. Sanderson Graham shut down all further questioning of the incident citing "national security" interests.
"It threatens Canada's national security to know when the Canadian Forces observed local Afghan national police beating a detainee that they transferred to that unit?" Champ asked.
"We object to any questions on this incident generally," Graham replied.
Citing reports by the U.S. State Department, the United Nations and Canada's Foreign Affairs Department, Amnesty and the civil liberties association have charged that detainees transferred by Canada to the Afghans are subject to torture in its prisons, and that the transfers should be halted. They also question why the military does not build its own prison camps for detainees.
In a surprise twist, Thursday's hearing was adjourned because court was told that the Canadian and Afghanistan governments had signed a revision of their prisoner transfer agreement earlier that morning.
Justice Michael Kelen announced the key details of the agreement that expands on the controversial December 2005 deal originally signed by Canada and Afghanistan.
Under Thursday's amended deal, Canadian officials will be granted unrestricted access to all Afghan prisons, where its prisoners are transferred, and they will be able to conduct private interviews with prisoners away from the eyes of their Afghan jailers.
"What happened this morning is a major development; it probably wouldn't have happened if this court case wasn't happening," Kelen said from the bench before adjourning the hearing.
The court challenge will continue at a yet-to-be-determined date, once lawyers from both sides have had a chance to cross-examine relevant witnesses on the amended agreement signed in Kabul.
Earlier this week, Champ grilled Noonan about why Canadian troops do not build their own prison camps in Afghanistan given that the military has a published manual that gives detailed instructions of how to do this.
Noonan said the military had a concern that running their own camps would force them to redirect large numbers of troops to running such a facility.
"The other concern that we do have is that without proper training, without experience in it, the execution of that may go wrong as has been evidenced in my understanding of - of, for example the Abu Ghraib situation," Noonan testified, referring to the scandal that rocked the U.S. military in Iraq three years ago over its abuse of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison it operated in Baghdad.
"Our folks have not been exposed to, historically, nor have been for at least my generation to the holding of detainees or prisoners of war, either one, in our generation," Noonan added. "We don't know the risk - the lack of knowledge that we have in the actual conduct of it is significant."
Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said Thursday the enhanced agreement with the Afghan government was better than the original version signed by the previous Liberal government in December 2005.
"We have done what was asked by others of Canadians. We are going to see that that is implemented by the Afghan government," MacKay said.
Senior Liberals downplayed their party's role in negotiating the original agreement to transfer detainees to Afghan authorities.
The Liberals said Thursday they have never denied crafting the original deal, which was signed in December 2005 by Gen. Rick Hillier, Canada's chief of the defence staff.
"The issue is not about what happened in 2005," said Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre.
He said the "embarrassment" over the issue has been caused by the Conservative government's failure to improve on the agreement and ensure the Geneva convention banning torture is respected.
Omar Samad, Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada, said Thursday's amendments now give Canadian officials more access to his county's prisons than any other NATO country.
Samad pledged that after being ravaged by a generation of war, Afghanistan would - with help of Canada and its allies - rebuild its institutions and get rid of systemic abuse in its prisons.
"This process has started - getting rid of lawful activities - and will continue," Samad said in an interview.
But the head of Amnesty International Canada said that the new deal did not go far enough to stop abuse in Afghan prisons.
"You don't prevent torture in country where it is rampant and systematic, as it is in Afghanistan, by sending in monitors on an occasional basis. It simply doesn't work," said Alex Neve.
