Unlike Britain and the Netherlands, Canada did not directly monitor how Afghan security forces treated detainees we turned over to them. We relied on the International Red Cross and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) to do that. But as Richard Colvin testified, AIHRC was not allowed into the prisons at Kandahar, and Canada's military brass devised a baffling six-step process for notifying the Red Cross in Kandahar when it turned over a prisoner (Military police to Canadian command at Kandahar Airport to CEFCOM in Ottawa to Canadian Embassy in Geneva to Red Cross International Headquarters to Red Cross unit...

19 November, 2009

Audio file of Colvin's testimony is a must listen, especially the first 20 minutes. CBC - Kady O'Malley's liveblog of the hearing. Moneyquote: I've got to say this testimony really is pretty damning, particularly given the credibility of this witness. He also seems utterly unafraid of any repercussions, and seems to be holding nothing back, including his efforts to alert highers up about his concerns. Canadian Press (Murray Brewster) - the more recent CP filing, at 4:46 this morning. Brewster has consistently done a good job on this story. Toronto Star - "Canada shamed on torture." CBC  (James Cudmore) -  "Handling of Afghan prisoners covered...

19 November, 2009

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...

19 November, 2009

CBC's Susan Ormiston encountered Richard Colvin when she was a war correspondent, and he was a senior Canadian political officer, in Kandahar. Tonight, on the national, she spoke about his credibility. He was the guy that reporters wanted to get a briefing from when they arrived in Kandahar to find out what was happening on the ground....

18 November, 2009

Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada,offers useful perspective on Colvin's allegation in an interview with CTV....

18 November, 2009

Richard Colvin's testimony will test the mettle of Canada's national reporters. Will they treat this as an issue that goes to the nation's soul, or as just another he-said, she-said episode in the partisan gamesmanship of Parliament Hill? So far, Paul Wells of Maclean's is passing the test with flying colors. Within hours, Wells refuted one element of the "bucket defence" Conservative MPs put up against Colvin's testimony. Conservative MPs are arguing that these prisoners were, after all, trained to tell tall tales about horrible treatment to attract sympathy. This is a standard argument made by torture apologists. It is probably true...

18 November, 2009

Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin told the Commons Committee on Afghan Detainees today that virtually all the prisoners Canada turned over to Afghan security forces in 2006 and 2007 were tortured. Colvin says senior Canadian military and civilian ignored his warnings about the abuse, and Red Cross officials who tried to intervene could not get their phone calls returned for three months. Here is: The Canadian Press account of Colvin's testimony. A transcript of his opening statement. Video of Bob Rae questioning Peter MacKay on the allegations in Question Period. Stories from CBC, the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail. If anyone...

18 November, 2009

A scathing editorial in today's New York Times denounces a US appeal court for having "brushed off" a lawsuit by Canadian Maher Arar. As the paper put it,  Arar "was seized in an American airport by federal agents acting on bad information from Canadian officials," and "held incommunicado and harshly interrogated before being sent to Syria, where he was tortured. He spent almost a year in a grave-size underground cell before the Syrians let him go." Two courts, one in Italy and one in the United States, ruled recently on the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition, which is the kidnapping...

11 November, 2009

Oh no! It's not a Playmobil toy, but a Contrarian regular directs us to "Charlie don't surf," a two-year-old post on the very peculiar website, Legofesto, featuring a (decidedly unofficial) Lego waterboarding device. Where will this stop? Legofesto describes herself as: A politics-junkie and news-hound, with a thing for lego. This is not a blog for children. She is very, very pissed off about how the War on Terror (or whatever we're now calling it) is prosecuted around the world, led by US/UK. Human rights abuses and real events in the world are recreated in lego. LEGO© in no way endorse this blog...

20 October, 2009

The British High Court has ruled that, pending appeal, it will finally publish seven paragraphs detailing the torture CIA agents inflicted on Binyam Mohamed. The court had earlier redacted the passage from a decision about Mohamed at the request of  British officials, who said it would jeopardize US-UK cooperation on security matters. The Telegraph, a British newspaper, quotes an anonymous official describing the explosive contents of the passage: The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated...

18 October, 2009
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