19 Nov Colvin’s torture testimony – #6 (link fixed)

Unfortunately, the officials House of Commons recording of Richard Colvin’s testimony is not in an audio format I know how to embed. Readers can listen to by clicking here [Link Fixed].

I have transcribed some excerpts below, but everyone should listen to the whole recording. Colvin describes shameful behaviour on the part of senior Canadian military officials and their civilian overseers. The acts and omissions he describes are a disgrace to Canada that must be corrected. The first step in correcting them is for Canadians to fully appreciate what took place.

Colvin explained that Canada did not monitor detainees after it turned them over to the Afghan security forces (known as the National Directorate of Security, or NDS). Instead, our forces relied on two human rights groups, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and the International Red Cross.

Unfortunately, the AIHRC had very limited capacity, and in Kandahar, were not allowed into the NDS prisons. So for the purposes of monitoring our detainees, they unfortunately were quite useless. The Red Cross is a very professional and effective organization. However, they were also no good for us as monitors. Once a detainee had been transferred to Afghan custody, the Red Cross, under their rules, could only inform the Afghan authorities about abuse. Under those strict rules, they are not permitted to tell Canada.

Colvin said that, unlike the Dutch and British forces who fought along side our soldiers, Canada was “extremely slow to inform the Red Cross when we had transferred a detainee to the Afghans.”

The Canadian Forces leadership created a very peculiar six-step process. Canadian military police in Kandahar had to inform the Canadian Command Element at Kandahar Airfield, who in turn informed Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command, or CEFCOM, in Ottawa. CEFCOM would eventually inform the Canadian Embassy in Geneva, who then informed Red Cross headquarters in Geneva, which finally was able to inform the Red Cross mission in Kandahar.

This process took days, weeks, or in some cases, up to two months. The Dutch and British military, by contract, had a one-step process. They simply notified the Red Cross office in Kandahar directly. The Dutch did so immediately upon detaining an Afghan, and the British within 24 hours.

In other words, during the critical days after a [Canadian-held] detainee was first transferred to the Afghan Intelligence Service, nobody was able to monitor them. Canada had decided that Canadians would not monitor. The AIHRC could not do so because they had very weak capacity and were not allowed into NDS jails. And the Red Cross in practice could not do so either because we did not inform them until days, weeks, or months after we had handed over the detainee.

During those first crucial days, what happened to our detainees? According to a number of reliable sources, they were tortured.

The most common forms of torture were beatings, whipping with power cables, and finally use of electricity. Also common were sleep deprivation, use of temperature extremes, use of knives and open flames, and sexual abuse, that is, rape.

Ttorture might be limited to the first days, or it could go on for months. According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was a standard operating procedure.

Canadian record keeping, again unlike the UK and the Netherlands,was so poor that once we finally got around to letting the Red Cross know we had turned a detainee over, they were often unable to locate the prisoner.

Canada, unlike the UK and the Netherlands, cloaked our detainee practices in extreme secrecy. The Dutch Government immediately informed the Dutch Parliament as soon as a detainee had been taken. The Dutch also provided their Parliament with extremely detailed reporting on every stage of detention and transfer, and on the results of monitoring after transfer. The UK has also announced publicly the number of their detainees.

The Canadian Forces by contrast have refused to reveal even the number of detainees they have taken, claiming this would violate operational security. When the Red Cross wanted to engage on detainee issues, for three months the Canadian Forces in Kandahar wouldn’t even take their phone calls. The same thing happened to the NATO ISAF Command in Kabul, which has responsibility to report detainnee numbes to Brussels, but was told, “We know what you want, but we won’t tell you.”

Frankly, the operational security argument makes no sense to me. If we go into a village and take away three Afghans, everyone in the village knows exactly who we have taken. In practice, the information was being concealed, not from the Taliban, but from the Canadian public.

A suggestion: School teachers and university professors may want to play Mr. Colvin’s courageous testimony to their classes.