Braided cable, yes; evidence of torture? No

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/12/2009 (5967 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Finding a piece of braided electrical cable in the office of an Afghani investigations director was enough to get the man fired, but not enough to convince Canadian officials torture was occurring.

Opposition MPs were incredulous Wednesday as three Canadian civil servants maintained they had no “first-hand” evidence that Afghan detainees were being abused, notwithstanding allegations by some prisoners of being beaten with cables.

Linda Garwood-Filbert, a Corrections Canada official now working as special projects officer at Stony Mountain penitentiary, testified at a Commons committee that the cable was found in a prison warden’s office on Nov. 5, 2007, by Foreign Affairs officials, whose report on the matter resulted in the unnamed man’s firing.

But Garwood-Filbert still maintained that during 33 visits to Afghan prisons and interviews with about two dozen prisoners, she’d seen no evidence of physical abuse.

Her testimony came after revelations the International Red Cross met twice with senior Canadian officials to deliver veiled but insistent warnings about torture in Afghan jails, a year before Canada acted to protect detainees.

Details of 2006 meetings, outlined in uncensored memos examined by The Canadian Press, undermine the federal government’s claims that diplomat Richard Colvin was a lone voice raising vague concerns about torture.

The Red Cross is prevented by international rules from using the term “torture” and from commenting on one country’s behaviour to another.

But the risks were so dire that detainees might be tortured in Afghan jails that the agency felt compelled to alert senior Canadian diplomats and officers in person, the memos say.

At one of the meetings, on June 2, 2006 at Kandahar Airfield, a military lawyer, the RCMP officer in charge of training Afghan police and some of Canada’s diplomatic staff were all advised about potential torture at the hands of Afghan prison officials.

A Red Cross representative “made a point of raising a the issue of treatment of Afghan detainees, including some who had been transferred to the Afghan authorities by Canadian forces,” Colvin reports in parts of a previously censored memo. The Red Cross complained about the “lack of judicial safeguards” and warned: “All kinds of things are going on.”

The wording is clear diplomatic code for torture, says University of Ottawa law professor Errol Mendes, and was as explicit as the Red Cross could be given diplomatic constraints.

Mendes describes the meeting as the seminal moment when Canadian officials and commanders had the duty under international law to launch their own investigation.

Canadian government officials and Conservative MPs have repeatedly indicated Colvin alone dealt with the Red Cross, and funnelled the humanitarian agency’s concerns to Ottawa.

Also Wednesday, the NDP released documents showing the Conservatives removed references to “extrajudicial executions” and “torture” in reports on Afghanistan.

Conservative ministers have said the documents had to be censored for “national security” reasons before they could be released to opposition MPs and the public.

— The Canadian Press