Tagged: Geneva Conventions
The Globe and Mail newsroom steps up
Several Globe and Mail reporters who looked looked at the leaked Colvin emails that fueled Christie Blatchford’s recent philippics against the diplomat came up with a very different picture. To begin, here’s Paul Koring:
The Harper government has blacked out large sections of relevant files handed over to the independent inquiry probing allegations of transfer to torture of detainees in Afghanistan, despite the fact that its investigators have the highest levels of national security clearance.
The heavily redacted documents… underscore the sweeping nature of the government’s efforts to keep the documentary record from the Military Police Complaints Commission, which is attempting to conduct an inquiry into allegations that Canada knowingly transferred prisoners to likely torturers in Afghanistan…
“I’m not sure ‘cover-up’ is the right word but someone is going to considerable lengths not to disclose what was known,” said Stuart Hendin, an expert in the law of war and international-rights issues…
“It’s almost impossible for any independent authority to conduct a meaningful inquiry” with documents rendered so unreadable, Mr. Hendin added. “It all suggests someone knew there were issues.”
Koring also offers a useful reminder:
Transfer to torture is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. It is also outlawed by international convention.
The whole article is must-read material.
Meanwhile, the Globe’s Campbell Clark reviews the evidence and finds three points of agreement…
- The government knew that abuses and torture took place in Afghan jails when the Canadian mission in Kandahar began in December of 2005.S
- Sometime in 2006, it became clear that detainees transferred by Canadian soldiers were not being properly tracked and monitored, meaning that Canadian officials could not know if they were being abused or tortured.
- Once Ottawa changed the transfer arrangements in May, 2007, serious allegations of torture of detainees captured by Canadian soldiers came to light. Colvin warned that the reports appeared credible; the generals and senior diplomat David Mulroney said they stopped transfers several times because of serious allegations.
…and one unanswered question:
- Why the government take so long to change the transfer arrangements?
Finally, the Globe’s Jane Taber has two blog posts (here and here) cataloging the Harper Government’s resort to jingoism in their efforts to thwart any inquiry into diplomat Richard Colvin’s testimony that senior Canadian military and foreign affairs officials ignored warnings that low-level prisoners we were turning over to Afghan security officials were likely being tortured.
Stephen Harper’s Tories wrapped themselves in the Canadian flag in Question Period today, aggressively accusing the Liberals of being anti-soldier, anti-athlete and by default, anti-Canadian.
“When will they stop attacking these men and women who are heroes,” demanded Transport Minister John Baird, dodging a question from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.
Leave Khadr in Guantanamo – reader
Contrarian reader Jon Coates of Halifax has no trouble with the kidnapping, rendition, and indefinite detention without due process to which Omar Khadr, a Canadian juvenile, has been subjected for seven years. He writes:
Omar Ahmed Khadr at age 14, one year before his capture and removal to Guantanamo.
I believe that Khadr is a prisoner of war and should stay right where he is until the war in Afghanistan has run its course, just like any other prisoner of war. As he is also being charged with criminal activity – killing an American medic, a non-combatant – and since he is in American custody for that crime, he should face American justice first. The United States is not some third world dictatorship and I am sure he will receive a fair trial – certainly fairer than he would have received in Afghanistan.
Once guilt or innocence has been established, then the Canadian government might act to have him returned to Canada. Or, as a prisoner of war, he might be repatriated to Afghanistan, the place where he was captured. In that case, he’d better hope the Taliban wins the war.
Well, either Khadr was a soldier and is now a prisoner of war entitled to the protections affording by the Geneva Conventions, or he is a civilian accused of a criminal act and entitled to the protections afforded accused persons under the US Constitution. Instead, for the first four years of his detention, Khadr was not treated as a prisoner of war but as “an enemy combatant,” whom the US denied Geneva protections. The Bush administration also argued that because Guantanamo prisoners were non-citizens held on foreign territory, the US Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to hear their appeals, a contention the court rejected in a 2006 decision.
Two points are missing from Coates’s analysis: First, as a 15-year-old, Khadr was a child soldier, a category civilized countries generally treat as victims not as perpetrators. Second, after widespread and credible accounts of torture inflicted on Guantanamo prisoners, every other western democracy has asked for and received the release of nationals detained there. The Harper government stands alone in its refusal to do so, and is even now appealing a federal court order requiring it to make such a request.
Coates’s faith in Khadr’s prospects for receiving a fair trial in the US no doubt reflect that country’s long and admirable tradition of devising, enshrining, and upholding Constitutional safeguards against police, prosecutorial, and judicial abuse. Whatever you think of its foreign policy, the US has shone a beacon a freedom to the world in this respect. That’s precisely what makes its despicable behavior at Guantanamo so dismaying.
