The Ugly Truth

Richard Colvin, a Canadian civilian official who was head of the Kandahar reconstruction team in 2006-07, testified to a special committee of the House of Commons today that Canadian troops in Afghanistan routinely turned over prisoners to Afghan authorities who they knew would be tortured. As the Globe & Mail is noting tonight,

All of the prisoners Canada handed over to Afghanistan's notorious intelligence service in 2006-07 were tortured and many of them were likely innocent, a federal official has testified.

Intelligence officer Richard Colvin, a former diplomat in Afghanistan, testified before a special House of Commons committee Wednesday.

He told MPs that captives taken by Canadian troops and handed over to the Afghans were subjected to beatings and electric shocks in 2006 and early 2007.

“According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured,” he said in his opening statement.

“For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure.”

Mr. Colvin was careful not to blame Canadian soldiers for carrying out the transfer orders, rather accusing the civilian and military leadership of creating the legal framework and policies that created the danger.

In a blistering indictment of Ottawa's handling of the situation, he said the Red Cross tried for three months in 2006 to warn the Canadian army in Kandahar about what was happening to prisoners, but no one would “even take their phone calls.”

Canada took a staggering amount of prisoners, roughly six times more than British forces and 20 times more than the Dutch, he told the committee.

The vast majority of them were not “high-value targets” such as Taliban commanders, Al-Qaeda operatives or bomb-makers, but rather ordinary Afghans, many with no connection to the insurgency.

The Harper government has been trying to avert this testimony for several months and both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Peter MacKay have denied that the government was warned about the treatment of prisoners Canadians were handing over.

It is more than ironic that former journalist Peter Kent led the Conservative attack on Colvin today. It would appear to signal a government desperate to derail an issue that could (and should) undo most of the gains they have made recently.