BLOGSPOT:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS-(Part V) the horrific betrayal of Canadian troops whlst at war in Afghanistan- NDP/Green/Bloc - and Civil Liberties BC (who make $$$$millions off our tax dollars) - alleged torture of Afghan Terrorists transfered to Afghan authorities by Canadian troops....Amnesty Int/BCCL/betrayal- A BIG READ if interested /PART V
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BLOGSPOT:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS-(Part IV) the horrific betrayal of Canadian troops whlst at war in Afghanistan- NDP/Green/Bloc - and Civil Liberties BC (who make $$$$millions off our tax dollars) - alleged torture of Afghan Terrorists transfered to Afghan authorities by Canadian troops....Amnesty Int/BCCL/betrayal- A BIG READ if interested /PART IV
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/09/canada-military-news-part-iv-horrific.html
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BLOGSPOT:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS-(Part 3) the horrific betrayal of Canadian troops whlst at war in Afghanistan- NDP/Green/Bloc - and Civil Liberties BC (who make $$$$millions off our tax dollars) - alleged torture of Afghan Terrorists transfered to Afghan authorities by Canadian troops....Amnesty Int/BCCL/betrayal- A BIG READ if interested /PART 3
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BLOGSPOT:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS- (Part 2) the horrific betrayal of Canadian troops whlst at war in Afghanistan- NDP/Green/Bloc - and Civil Liberties BC (who make $$$$millions off our tax dollars) - alleged torture of Afghan Terrorists transfered to Afghan authorities by Canadian troops.... A BIG READ if interested (PART 2)
---------------
BLOGSPOT:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS- the horrific
betrayal of Canadian troops whlst at war in Afghanistan- NDP/Green/Bloc - and
Civil Liberties BC (who make $$$$millions off our tax dollars) - alleged
torture of Afghan Terrorists transfered to Afghan authorities by Canadian
troops.... A BIG READ if interested /PART 1
--------------
PART
VI
... CHECK OUT WHAT IT BEING DONE TO OUR TROOPS IN THE
UK....
Every
Islamic net and paper on the planet....
Court
action to prevent UK complicity in Afghan torture
uk
and
THIS IS WHAT IT COMES DOWN TO...
Every
Islamic net and paper on the planet....
Court action to
prevent UK complicity in Afghan torture
London,
April 19, IRNA – The British government was being challenged Monday to prevent
allegations of its complicity in torture in Afghanistan by stopping the
transfer of prisoners captured by UK forces into Afghan custody
“International
law couldn’t be clearer. You can’t hand people over to torturers,” said human
rights solicitor David Carey (pictured) of Public Interest Lawyers (PIL),
spearheading the legal action at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London.
“It is time for the Government to stop burying its head in the sand about this. How many more people have to be tortured before it acknowledges the problem?” Carey said in a statement obtained by IRNA.
The judicial review into alleged British complicity in torture comes after the government was forced to hand over evidence about the treatment of prisoners held by Afghan National Directorate of Security after losing a court case last year.
Concerns were first raised by Amnesty International in its 2007 report “Afghanistan: Detainees transferred to torture: ISAF complicity?” which prompted the launch of a judicial review 18 months ago.
Phil Shiner, who founded PIL in 1999 and has since pioneered many human rights abuses cases against the UK government, said he was “astounded” by the amount of evidence that the government has had to hand over in the latest court action.
“This is not a question of bad apples. This is British complicity in torture, authorised at the highest levels of Government and perpetuated in the face of a growing and worrying number of allegations,” Shiner said.
The judicial review on allegations that the British government has “been knowingly complicit, for a number of years, in the torture of British-arrested prisoners by the Afghan secret police,” is being brought by anti-war activist Maya Evans.
“I’m pleased that, at last, a British court is to scrutinise this. Human rights should be at the centre of our Government’s policy, not an inconvenient afterthought,” she said.
Maya, a leading campaigner in 'Justice Not Vengeance', which focuses on Iraq, Afghanistan, civil liberties and Islamophobia, became the first person convicted under UK legislation in 2005 for taking part in an unauthorised demonstration within one km. of parliament.
The majority of other human rights abuses so far heard in London have involved British troops deployed during the Iraq war as well as in the role of British security and intelligence agents in the capture and rendition of alleged terrorist suspects around the world
“It is time for the Government to stop burying its head in the sand about this. How many more people have to be tortured before it acknowledges the problem?” Carey said in a statement obtained by IRNA.
The judicial review into alleged British complicity in torture comes after the government was forced to hand over evidence about the treatment of prisoners held by Afghan National Directorate of Security after losing a court case last year.
Concerns were first raised by Amnesty International in its 2007 report “Afghanistan: Detainees transferred to torture: ISAF complicity?” which prompted the launch of a judicial review 18 months ago.
Phil Shiner, who founded PIL in 1999 and has since pioneered many human rights abuses cases against the UK government, said he was “astounded” by the amount of evidence that the government has had to hand over in the latest court action.
“This is not a question of bad apples. This is British complicity in torture, authorised at the highest levels of Government and perpetuated in the face of a growing and worrying number of allegations,” Shiner said.
The judicial review on allegations that the British government has “been knowingly complicit, for a number of years, in the torture of British-arrested prisoners by the Afghan secret police,” is being brought by anti-war activist Maya Evans.
“I’m pleased that, at last, a British court is to scrutinise this. Human rights should be at the centre of our Government’s policy, not an inconvenient afterthought,” she said.
Maya, a leading campaigner in 'Justice Not Vengeance', which focuses on Iraq, Afghanistan, civil liberties and Islamophobia, became the first person convicted under UK legislation in 2005 for taking part in an unauthorised demonstration within one km. of parliament.
The majority of other human rights abuses so far heard in London have involved British troops deployed during the Iraq war as well as in the role of British security and intelligence agents in the capture and rendition of alleged terrorist suspects around the world
---------------------
------------
DEFINE
ABUSE OF DETAINEES IN AFGHANISTAN DEFINE
IT....
WHAT
WHO
WHEN
WHERE
WHY
FOR
WHAT PURPOSE-
WHAT
IS THE END RESULT ASKED FOR??
---------------
Canada 's Guantanamo
A scandal erupted last week in sleepy Ottawa with the
revelations of Canada's chief diplomat in Kandahar in 2006-07, Richard Colvin,
who told a House of Commons committee on Afghanistan that Afghans arrested by
Canadian military and handed over to Afghan authorities were knowingly
tortured. His and others' attempts to raise the alarm had been quashed by the
ruling Conservative government and he felt a moral obligation to make public
what was happening.
The startling allegations -- the first of their kind
from a senior official -- have caused extreme embarrassment to the government,
which has more than once stated categorically that detainees were not passed to
Afghan control if there was any danger of torture. Canada has 2,700 soldiers in
the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the hotbed of the insurgency, on a
mission that is due to end in 2011.
Warnings to Colvin to keep quiet were not enough to
cow him and he calmly told shocked MPs that he started sending reports soon
after he arrived in Kandahar in early 2006 to top officials indicating the
Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) was abusing detainees. "For
a year and half after they knew about the very high risk of torture, they
continued to order military police in the field to hand our detainees to the
NDS."
Colvin's comments come at a sensitive time for the
minority government, which was almost ousted by the opposition a year ago. So
far, 133 Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan and recent polls indicate
most Canadians oppose the mission. Colvin said Canadian military leaders in
Afghanistan "cloaked our detainee practices in extreme secrecy,"
refused to hand over details of prisoners to the Red Cross in a timely fashion
and kept "hopeless" records. "As I learned more about our
detainee practices, I came to the conclusion that they were un-Canadian,
counter-productive, and probably illegal."
Officials in Ottawa initially ignored his reports.
"By April 2007 we were receiving written messages from the senior Canadian
government coordinator for Afghanistan to the effect that we should be quiet
and do what we were told," he said.
Canadian troops first began transferring detainees to
Afghan authorities in late 2005. Eventually, faced with persistent allegations
of abuse, Ottawa signed a deal with Kabul in May 2007 to boost protection for
detainees. Colvin said Canadian troops regularly detain six times as many
Afghans as the British, who are also operating in southern Afghanistan.
Although some may have been Taliban members, many were "random human
beings in the wrong place at the wrong time." He added: "We detained
and handed over for severe torture a lot of innocent people. Complicity in
torture is a war crime."
In the face of accusations of this complicity, Prime
Minister Stephen Harper publically insisted Canadian military officials did not
send individuals off to be tortured. "Behind the military's wall of
secrecy that, unfortunately, was exactly what we were doing," Colvin told
his captive audience.
Now, instead of launching an inquiry, the
Conservatives are pursuing their usual practice of smearing critics. "We
frankly just found his evidence lacked credibility. All his information was, he
admits, at best second hand," said Lawrie Hawn, parliamentary secretary to
Defense Minister Peter MacKay. MacKay angrily dismissed the charges, while
former Canadian military chief-in-command in Afghanistan Rick Hillier can't
"remember reading a single one of those cables," and depicted the
fuss as mere "howling at the moon. Even in our own prisons somebody can
get beaten up," he cracked to reporters.
But then this is standard operating procedure for
Harper's Conservatives. They called New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton
"Taliban Jack" for his suggestion that NATO should negotiate with
elements of the Taliban. That is now the policy not only of Canada in
Afghanistan, but of the Karzai government in Kabul.
In The Unexpected War, Janice Gross Stein and
Eugene Lang report that the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Amnesty
International, and Canadian Louise Arbour, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights
"had concluded that abuse, torture, and extrajudicial killing were
routinely inflicted on people in Afghan custody."
University of Ottawa Law Professor Amir Attaran
documented how Afghan detainees have been beaten not only by the NDS, but while
detained and interrogated by Canadian soldiers. Attaran called for an
investigation into the treatment of the detainees by the Military Police
Complaints Commission, a civilian body established to investigate complaints
against the Canadian military.
In February 2007, the Canadian military launched an
investigation and heard testimony concerning three Afghans beaten by Canadian
soldiers, and handed over to the Afghans, who subsequently disappeared. The Globe
and Mail managed to interview30 former detainees who said they had been
transferred from Canadian to Afghan jurisdiction and then had been tortured.
Then defence minister Gordon O'Connor told the House
of Commons that a new agreement struck with the Karzai government stipulated
that "If there is something wrong with their treatment, the Red Cross or
Red Crescent would inform us and we would take action." This was exposed
as a lie when Red Cross spokesman Simon Schorno told the Globe and Mail
that "we were informed of the agreement, but we are not a party to it and
we are not monitoring the implementation of it."
Colvin immediately warned that the new agreement was
full of holes. It can only be concluded that the government condoned the torture,
ignoring and now pooh-poohing complaints about it. Attempts to feign innocence
don't hold water. According to a senior NATO official, Harper used a
"6,000-mile screwdriver" to make sure "that every single
statement that went out [was] cleared by him personally."
Michael Semple, Colvin's EU colleague in Kabul, said
he was "totally flabbergasted" by insinuations that Colvin's reports
were not credible, that he was a closet Taliban sympathiser "soft on
terrorists." Colvin was an "absolutely rock solid" diplomat who
volunteered to go in as a civilian representative with Canada's Provincial
Reconstruction Team in Kandahar after a close friend of Semple's was killed by
a suicide car bomber outside Kandahar.
But to anyone who knows anything at all about US --
and now, alas, Canadian -- politics, this is hardly new. Colin Powell's rise to
the heights of US politics was due to his burying the initial reports of the My
Lai massacre in 1968 where US troops gunned down 500 mostly women, children and
seniors in an act of revenge. Charged with investigating the incident, then
major Powell reported, "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact
that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are
excellent." Powell was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1970, served a
White House fellowship under president Richard Nixon from 1972-73, and
continued up the ladder, becoming a general in 1989 and finally secretary of
state in 2001.
Current Canadian politics occasionally provides a
touch of humor to the inanities of Western moral hypocrisy. Remember the travel
ban imposed by the Conservative government on UK MP George Galloway this
spring, apparently because he is a terrorist. The Conservative government
denied it had anything to do with the decision, that it was entirely up to the
Canada Border Services Agency. Or the current furor over US lesbian soldier
Bethany Lanae Smith, whom a Canadian judge insists be granted refugee status,
overturning an Immigration and Refugee Board ruling. Not because she rejects
the illegal US wars and occupations, but because she was harassed by male US
soldiers and resented their taunts and/or untoward advances.
The recent hemorrage of US war resisters coming to
Canada has been resolutely staunched by the pro-war government, in line with
its fervent support of US/ NATO wars. But in the interests of political
correctness, the government may well allow Smith to stay, unlike her more
principled fellow soldiers, male and female, who defected to Canada out of
conviction, and who were sent back to the US to face jail terms.
Will there be any consequences to Colvin for his
embarrassing revelations? Word has it that the hitherto promising career of the
former second-in-command in Afghanistan and current high-level diplomat in Washington
is over. Remember the fate of Craig Murray, the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan
from 2002-2004 whom the Foreign Office tried to declare noncompis mentis,
and who resigned, supposedly in disgrace. His altercation with the empire
sobered him and made him a committed anti-imperialist. At his site, he even
posts an update of US-caused deaths in Iraq, now at 1,339,771.
If Colvin's career as a diplomat is over, he can
still take a page from Murray's post-FO career book. His expose of Uzbekistan
President Islam Karimov as one of the world's most eminent torturers, Murder
in Samarkand, is now being made into a feature film. He has been awarded
multiple prizes for promoting world peace, ran for parliament against his
former boss foreign minister Jack Straw, and is a witty and incisive
commentator on the internet, PressTV and elsewhere. He is currently rector of
his alma mater the University of Dundee.
There is life after the death of diplomatic service.
Murray quips, "Being a dissident is quite fun."
NOTE:
Eric is a journalist and writer for Al-Ahram Weekly
in Cairo. He specializes in Russian and Eurasian affairs.
---------------------------
Canada
ex-defense chief rejects alleged military complicity in torture of Afghans
[JURIST]
Canadian former
Amesty International Canada and the Canada's Afghan
whistleblower mistaken - ex-boss
OTTAWA
(Reuters) - A Canadian diplomat who says officials ignored his warnings about
the abuse of detainees handed over to Afghan authorities was mistaken, the
man's former boss told a Parliamentary committee on Thursday.
The
criticism by David Mulroney, a former top adviser in Afghanistan, comes as the
Conservative government tries hard to demolish allegations by diplomat Richard
Colvin, who testified last week that Canada's policy of prisoner transfers in
2006 and 2007 was deeply flawed and most likely illegal.
Colvin
said virtually all of the prisoners handed over to the Afghan NDS intelligence
service in 2006 and 2007 had been abused and alleged most of them had been
innocent civilians.
But
Mulroney, the senior bureaucrat in charge of the Afghan file at the time,
testified on Thursday that some of Colvin's statements were wrong.
"I
didn't agree with his assertion that everybody who went into the NDS was
tortured, that the detainees were all farmers or probably all innocent,"
Mulroney told a House of Commons committee on Afghanistan. "This is where
I think he went from an observation to speculation."
Canada
has 2,700 troops in the southern city of Kandahar on a combat mission that is
due to end in 2011. So far, 133 have been killed and public support for the
mission is waning.
The
government is refusing to release Colvin's reports on security grounds.
On
Wednesday, two top retired generals denied Colvin's allegations that Canadians
handed over detainees even though they knew there was a risk of torture. If
true, this would have been a war crime.
The
generals also said there had been nothing in Colvin's early reports to suggest
abuse was a risk -- a statement Mulroney said was true.
But
questioned vigorously by opposition legislators, he was unable to state
categorically that none of the prisoners handed over had been abused.
Government
ministers say Colvin's evidence is weak and portray him as a man who was duped
by the Taliban.
Mulroney
took a noticeably softer line, saying Colvin had put in good work under very
difficult circumstances.
(Reporting
by David Ljunggren; editing by Rob Wilson
-------------------------------------
LATE
NEWS NOVEMBER 27 (AM) PAGE 2 FOR OUR TROOPS
Category: News and Politics
Category: News and Politics
Page 2-
November 27 4am mytime
Back in the 1980s When the Soviet Union had troops in
Afghanistan, the US government was
Now that the Taliban is our enemy, we support them less
directly. Here's how it works: The U.S. hires private contractors to secure
supply routes through Afghanistan to bring guns and ammunition, food and
clothing to our troops dispersed around the countryside. The contractors do
this in the cheapest, most stable and least violent way, by paying off the
warlords who control the local terrain. These are Taliban leaders, and our
protection payments last year constituted 10% of the entire Afghan economy.
In this way, we give the Taliban warlords the two essential
things that they need to sustain their positions of power: We offer them an
enemy, assuring that the people need them for protection; and we give them
money to recruit local peasants, train them and employ them as guerrillas.
Article in secretly funding the guerrillas
who undermined the occupation. These people were passionate Muslims, opposed to
intoxicants including poppy production that was the region's most lucrative
export. They called themselves Taliban. The Nation 11/30/09
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues
its program of paying Afghani farmers to hold down production of opium poppies.
Needless to say, in order to qualify for these payments, one must be recognized
as a grower of poppies. Lori Price, writing for
Jeanne MacKenzie writing for
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the U.S.
is paying Blackwater to hunt down and assassinate Taliban leaders, reports
Jeremy Scahill in
This is what an outsourced war
looks like. In some bizarre sense, money is being saved by virtue of each
individual contract that the U.S. signs. But, in the aggregate the mission of
these ventures is ill-conceived or downright contradictory.
President Obama wants to decide
this week whether to continue and expand the war in Afghanistan. In his mind,
this is a Citizens for Legitimate Government charges that most of this money ends up in the hands of
the Taliban. And reducing the poppy production increases profit margins for the
CIA, which buys drugs for distribution back home. Global Research, Canada tells us how money allocated by the U.S. for road
and bridge construction in Afghanistan becomes extortion payments to these same
warlords.The Nation this
week. Obama has expanded the program under which unmanned drones deliver bombs
to Pakistani villages. tough decision.
Allowing China a Dominant Role
in Afghanistan's Future
For OpEdNews: Ron Fullwood -
Writer
". . . power in the 21st
century is no longer a zero-sum game; one country's success need not come at
the expense of another. And that is why the United States insists we do not
seek to contain China's rise. On the contrary, we welcome China as a strong and
prosperous and successful member of the community of nations." --President
Obama, speaking at town hall meeting in Shanghai, China Nov. 16
ON his recent trip to China, President Obama publicly stressed cooperation between our nations and spoke at length of values and challenges that he said we share, while relegating serious criticisms of China's human rights record and economic concerns to private talks with the leaders there. Quite predictably, discussions of the economic concerns were reportedly muted by the fact of the record and rising U.S. debt that China finances such a great percentage of.
It's also reasonable to assume that the president's discussions of human rights abuses by China were similarly corrupted by the fact of America's spotty and sometimes negligent attention to the often destructive and devastating effects of our militarism waged across the sovereign borders of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan - the collateral effect of our 'shock and awe' bombings of civilian areas, the overthrow, replacement, and deliberate meddling in the affairs of sovereign governments; and the arbitrary, indefinite, and anti-democratic detentions of the citizenry, often without charges, trial, or counsel.
ON his recent trip to China, President Obama publicly stressed cooperation between our nations and spoke at length of values and challenges that he said we share, while relegating serious criticisms of China's human rights record and economic concerns to private talks with the leaders there. Quite predictably, discussions of the economic concerns were reportedly muted by the fact of the record and rising U.S. debt that China finances such a great percentage of.
It's also reasonable to assume that the president's discussions of human rights abuses by China were similarly corrupted by the fact of America's spotty and sometimes negligent attention to the often destructive and devastating effects of our militarism waged across the sovereign borders of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan - the collateral effect of our 'shock and awe' bombings of civilian areas, the overthrow, replacement, and deliberate meddling in the affairs of sovereign governments; and the arbitrary, indefinite, and anti-democratic detentions of the citizenry, often without charges, trial, or counsel.
That spirit and focus from this new American administration on publicly stifling the negative about China and accentuating the positive isn't restricted to just economics or their abysmal lack of respect for their citizens' rights and freedom. The administration has yet to publicly challenge or solicit China to step up to their responsibility to the security of their border nation, Afghanistan.
In a period where China is experiencing unprecedented levels of growth and development - contrasted with America's faltering economy - little has been demanded of Afghanistan's neighbor in both the campaign against terrorism (a concern which China insists they share with the U.S.) and in the financing of the development of Afghanistan's security, an effort which the U.S. has opportunistically dominated.
At first blush, it would make sense that our government would be wary of allowing China - our longtime economic and military rival - to influence and advantage themselves of the Afghan regime our country folk are fighting and dying to preserve in power. It would even stand to reason that, given the posture our State Dept. and military take against what they see as potential threats from China's growing military, to China's refusal to cooperate with the U.S. in voting for U.N. sanctions against Iran, that our government and military would be loath to allow China to advantage themselves of the Afghan land or resources.
Yet, not only is our government acquiescing to China in their economic expansion into the new Afghanistan, our military has been directly protecting China's interests behind the sacrifice of our own nation's defenders.
In 2007, China's bid for copper rights in Afghanistan was accepted by the Karzai regime in a process in which many observers said the ethically-challenged government unfairly favored their influential neighbor. The deal included rights to the construction of a coal-fired electrical power plant and the contract to build Afghanistan's first freight railway. Earlier this year, it was reported that American troops there just happened to set up bases in Afghanistan's Jalrez Valley that they claimed were checkpoints against Taliban activity in the area, but effectively provides protection for China's copper mine.
While it's true, as American officials insist, that protecting China's mining enterprise in Afghanistan is also a defense of the country's most lucrative asset (a presumed benefit for the country's redevelopment), the glaring question is why hasn't the U.S. insisted that China assume the cost and function of that security?
China should be doing more in Afghanistan.
There is a glaring shortage of sustainable industry for Afghans who desperately need work. I'm not a fan of mining, but China's interest there should be leveraged to demand more from them in support of the infrastructure and development of the area for Afghans. I'm not supportive of a long-term U.S. role in defending that infrastructure. That job would seem to better fit folks in the region who should directly benefit from the Chinese projects and others, rather than some potential benefit to America.
The answer to all of that may well be within our nation's obvious rivalry with China and a lingering fear and secret loathing of the emerging giant. It can't be unnoticed by China that every decision our government makes to escalate and deepen our military involvement in the region is indirectly increasing our the debt to them that we've accrued as our military budget is inflated beyond our many other priorities and ability to pay. It may well be that there is a natural reluctance from the administration to demand an Afghanistan tribute from the creditors to that debt.
It would likely pain our defensive government and military establishment to allow China to move troops in and set up defensive bases in Afghanistan's neighboring provinces (like Uzbekistan) to 'fight terror'. But if there is any sincerity at all about preserving and defending the government we've helped install into power and authority, we should acknowledge that regional countries like Pakistan, Russia, China, and even Iran are going develop closer and more meaningful economic and security arrangements with the new regime than the West. It makes sense that we demand they assume responsibility for preserving the state they benefit from.
China should be allowed to do more in Afghanistan.
In March, the Obama administration accepted an invitation to attend a Russian-hosted conference on Afghanistan at which Iran also participated. The State Department sent a senior diplomat to a special conference of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization being held in Moscow to discuss Afghanistan. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization includes Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan as members. Along with Iran, India, Mongolia and Pakistan are observers.
I'm convinced that China, Russia, and their trading partner, Iran, are indispensable to a 'stable' Afghanistan in the future. It was interesting to see the U.S. attend this conference because the SCO is usually acting outside of American interests. I can only conclude from the willingness to engage at this meeting that the U.S. also views these nations as indispensable to Afghanistan's future. That wasn't the case with the last White House which focused on its antipathy toward Iran in distancing themselves from the group. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld questioned Iran's involvement with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, saying that he thought it 'strange' that the SCO had included Iran because of what he said were their 'links to terrorists'.
If this administration is serious about looking for an 'exit' out of Afghanistan, while staying true to their stated concerns for 'stability' and defense of the Afghan government, they will need a regional organization like the SCO to organize Afghanistan's neighbors to provide the finance and the manpower for a cause which will (and should) arguably benefit those nations above and beyond America's own grudging campaign against the remnants and ghosts of the fugitive 9-11 terror suspects. In that initiative, China should be asked and allowed to assume a more responsible and dominant role in Afghanistan befitting the enormous stake and benefit they will undoubtedly enjoy from the protection our own military forces presume to provide at this point in our eight-year-plus occupation.
NOTE
Ron Fullwood, is an activist
from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military
Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price
The pressure on Karzai is
immense. In recent days, a veritable parade of ambassadors has descended on his
office. Diplomats are speaking of a 'shopping list' that they have presented to
Karzai, who has found himself weakened since the manipulated elections that
recently returned him to office.
Just one day before Afghan
President Hamid Karzai is sworn in for his second term, the country's attorney
general has announced that he has prepared indictments against five top
politicians on charges of corruption. It's now up to Karzai to take action.
NATO has also said it is willing to help in the fight against graft.
When Hamid Karzai takes his oath
of office in the presidential office in Kabul at 11 a.m. on Thursday, the
amount of attention focused on him will likely not be to his liking. Every word
of his speech will be analyzed by the international community, led by
The pressure on Karzai is
immense. In recent days, a veritable parade of ambassadors has descended on his
office. Diplomats are speaking of a "shopping list" that they have
presented to Karzai, who has found himself weakened since the manipulated
elections that recently returned him to office. They have made it clear to
Karzai that he is expected to discard some of his aides and take concrete steps
against rampant corruption in his country. Visits from Clinton and other
leading Western politicians are aimed at upping the pressure.
Kabul's justice department
appears to have gotten the message. One day before Karzai is sworn in for his
second term in office, Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko told SPIEGEL
ONLINE in Kabul that his office has prepared indictments against five
high-ranking politicians. "We have indictments with sufficient proof
against five ministers," Aloko said. "Two of them are in the current
cabinet and three are former ministers." The indictments have been
submitted to President Karzai. "The president only has to grant his
approval, then the trials can proceed," Aloko said.
An Uncomfortable Position
Citing Afghan law, the attorney
general declined to name the politicians involved until the trials begin. He
said he was confident that the legal proceedings would result in "stiff
penalties." In conjunction with other government officials from the
Justice and Interior Ministries, Aloko on Monday announced the creation of an
anti-corruption task force, which would receive the assistance of foreign
experts.
Should the indictments be acted
upon, it would represent a significant step taken by the government against
corruption. The fact that Karzai now must make a decision regarding the five
cases places him in a decidedly uncomfortable position. Afghan ministers are
often chosen based on a complicated formula taking into account ethnicities and
other factors. Should Karzai play tough, it could cost him vital political
alliances upon which his power rests.
Western diplomats have responded
with reserve to news of Akolo's indictments. They are keeping their enthusiasm
on hold until they know exactly who has been targeted. Those who are familiar
with the way politics work in Kabul are concerned that corruption proceedings
could be used to get rid of unwanted political adversaries. Still, said one
diplomat, the indictments are fundamentally "a step in the right
direction."
One of the ministers in Aloko's
sights could be the mining minister, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel. Citing a US
official, the Washington Post reported Wednesday that Adel, in granting
a copper mining contract worth almost $3 billion, allegedly pocketed $30
million in bribes. The minister, a confidant of the Afghan warlord Dostum, is
said to have received the money in cash in Dubai.
25 Million Dollars Immediately
Such details shine a spotlight
on the kind of business practices that have become normal in Afghanistan. One of
the bidders on the copper mining contract -- which provides access to one of
the largest remaining un-mined copper reserves in the world -- claimed that the
minister indicated he needed $25 million in cash immediately. The money was
necessary to prove that the company's application was "serious."
Reports of such requests made by leading officials in Karzai's administration
have become commonplace.
Just how Karzai should meet the
demands of the international community remains unclear. Washington and London
are pressuring him to discard his designated vice president, the feared former
warlord Mohammad Qasim Fahim, known to Afghans simply as "Marshall
Fahim." Fahim isn't just considered to be corrupt, but is also thought to
head up the country's lucrative kidnapping industry. Karzai chose Fahim for the
votes he brought with him.
Diplomats in Kabul merely roll
their eyes when asked about Fahim. "Fahim is for us a non-person who we
would rather see before the International Criminal Court in The Hague instead of
in the presidential palace," one high-level NATO official from Brussels
recently told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Just as problematic for NATO is General Dostum,
who Karzai recalled from his exile in Turkey in an effort to secure the support
of those in northern Afghanistan who remain loyal to Dostum. Dostum is now
demanding a number of top posts for his followers.
ISAF Joins the Anti-Corruption
Fight
In order to increase the
pressure on Karzai, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is now
set to support the fight against corruption. According to information obtained
by SPIEGEL ONLINE, ISAF Commander Stanley McChrystal has issued an order to all
NATO troops to forward evidence of corruption among politicians and officials
to Afghan authorities. Even information gathered by intelligence services is to
be checked and, in cases where it is deemed appropriate, passed on to the
Afghan attorney general.
The order represents a shift in
NATO policy, which has long seen corruption as an internal matter for Afghanistan.
"The new guidance directs forces to share that information through normal
reporting channels to the government of Afghanistan and proper law enforcement
agencies that can take action," NATO said in a statement e-mailed to
SPIEGEL ONLINE. Corruption, NATO wrote in the statement, feeds "negative
security trends" and "has a direct bearing on the insurgency" in
Afghanistan. "During the course of normal framework operations, ISAF
forces often uncover evidence or information regarding corrupt officials or
malign actors," NATO wrote.
'It Won't Happen Overnight'
In a country as huge and diverse
as Afghanistan, it is difficult to foresee what the effect of the new measures
might be. Skeptics are concerned that, once Karzai is sworn in, the pressure on
him to act may recede. US diplomats, for their part, want to continue the push.
Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali, one of the most powerful men in Afghanistan and
also suspected of being corrupt, expressed confidence on the eve of his
brother's swearing-in ceremony. "This country is ruled by kings," he
said. "And the relatives of the king are very powerful."
Wali, often referred to as the
"Al Capone of Kandahar" by US officials, was philosophical about the
need for change in his country. "Things will change," he conceded.
"But it won't happen overnight."
Canada 's Guantanamo
A scandal erupted last week in
sleepy Ottawa with the revelations of Canada's chief diplomat in Kandahar in
2006-07, Richard Colvin, who told a House of Commons committee on Afghanistan
that Afghans arrested by Canadian military and handed over to Afghan
authorities were knowingly tortured. His and others' attempts to raise the
alarm had been quashed by the ruling Conservative government and he felt a
moral obligation to make public what was happening.
The startling allegations -- the
first of their kind from a senior official -- have caused extreme embarrassment
to the government, which has more than once stated categorically that detainees
were not passed to Afghan control if there was any danger of torture. Canada
has 2,700 soldiers in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the hotbed of the
insurgency, on a mission that is due to end in 2011.
Warnings to Colvin to keep quiet
were not enough to cow him and he calmly told shocked MPs that he started
sending reports soon after he arrived in Kandahar in early 2006 to top
officials indicating the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) was
abusing detainees. "For a year and half after they knew about the very
high risk of torture, they continued to order military police in the field to
hand our detainees to the NDS."
Colvin's comments come at a
sensitive time for the minority government, which was almost ousted by the
opposition a year ago. So far, 133 Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan
and recent polls indicate most Canadians oppose the mission. Colvin said
Canadian military leaders in Afghanistan "cloaked our detainee practices
in extreme secrecy," refused to hand over details of prisoners to the Red
Cross in a timely fashion and kept "hopeless" records. "As I
learned more about our detainee practices, I came to the conclusion that they
were un-Canadian, counter-productive, and probably illegal."
Officials in Ottawa initially
ignored his reports. "By April 2007 we were receiving written messages
from the senior Canadian government coordinator for Afghanistan to the effect
that we should be quiet and do what we were told," he said.
Canadian troops first began
transferring detainees to Afghan authorities in late 2005. Eventually, faced
with persistent allegations of abuse, Ottawa signed a deal with Kabul in May
2007 to boost protection for detainees. Colvin said Canadian troops regularly
detain six times as many Afghans as the British, who are also operating in
southern Afghanistan. Although some may have been Taliban members, many were
"random human beings in the wrong place at the wrong time." He added:
"We detained and handed over for severe torture a lot of innocent people.
Complicity in torture is a war crime."
In the face of accusations of
this complicity, Prime Minister Stephen Harper publically insisted Canadian
military officials did not send individuals off to be tortured. "Behind
the military's wall of secrecy that, unfortunately, was exactly what we were
doing," Colvin told his captive audience.
Now, instead of launching an
inquiry, the Conservatives are pursuing their usual practice of smearing
critics. "We frankly just found his evidence lacked credibility. All his
information was, he admits, at best second hand," said Lawrie Hawn,
parliamentary secretary to Defense Minister Peter MacKay. MacKay angrily
dismissed the charges, while former Canadian military chief-in-command in
Afghanistan Rick Hillier can't "remember reading a single one of those
cables," and depicted the fuss as mere "howling at the moon. Even in
our own prisons somebody can get beaten up," he cracked to reporters.
But then this is standard
operating procedure for Harper's Conservatives. They called New Democratic
Party leader Jack Layton "Taliban Jack" for his suggestion that NATO
should negotiate with elements of the Taliban. That is now the policy not only
of Canada in Afghanistan, but of the Karzai government in Kabul.
In The Unexpected War,
Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang report that the Afghan Independent Human
Rights Commission, Amnesty International, and Canadian Louise Arbour, the UN
Commissioner for Human Rights "had concluded that abuse, torture, and
extrajudicial killing were routinely inflicted on people in Afghan
custody."
University of Ottawa Law
Professor Amir Attaran documented how Afghan detainees have been beaten not
only by the NDS, but while detained and interrogated by Canadian soldiers.
Attaran called for an investigation into the treatment of the detainees by the
Military Police Complaints Commission, a civilian body established to
investigate complaints against the Canadian military.
In February 2007, the Canadian
military launched an investigation and heard testimony concerning three Afghans
beaten by Canadian soldiers, and handed over to the Afghans, who subsequently
disappeared. The Globe and Mail managed to interview30 former detainees
who said they had been transferred from Canadian to Afghan jurisdiction and
then had been tortured.
Then defence minister Gordon
O'Connor told the House of Commons that a new agreement struck with the Karzai
government stipulated that "If there is something wrong with their
treatment, the Red Cross or Red Crescent would inform us and we would take
action." This was exposed as a lie when Red Cross spokesman Simon Schorno
told the Globe and Mail that "we were informed of the agreement,
but we are not a party to it and we are not monitoring the implementation of
it."
Colvin immediately warned that
the new agreement was full of holes. It can only be concluded that the
government condoned the torture, ignoring and now pooh-poohing complaints about
it. Attempts to feign innocence don't hold water. According to a senior NATO
official, Harper used a "6,000-mile screwdriver" to make sure "that
every single statement that went out [was] cleared by him personally."
Michael Semple, Colvin's EU
colleague in Kabul, said he was "totally flabbergasted" by
insinuations that Colvin's reports were not credible, that he was a closet
Taliban sympathiser "soft on terrorists." Colvin was an
"absolutely rock solid" diplomat who volunteered to go in as a
civilian representative with Canada's Provincial Reconstruction Team in
Kandahar after a close friend of Semple's was killed by a suicide car bomber
outside Kandahar.
But to anyone who knows anything
at all about US -- and now, alas, Canadian -- politics, this is hardly new.
Colin Powell's rise to the heights of US politics was due to his burying the
initial reports of the My Lai massacre in 1968 where US troops gunned down 500
mostly women, children and seniors in an act of revenge. Charged with
investigating the incident, then major Powell reported, "In direct
refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American
soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." Powell was promoted to
lieutenant-colonel in 1970, served a White House fellowship under president
Richard Nixon from 1972-73, and continued up the ladder, becoming a general in
1989 and finally secretary of state in 2001.
Current Canadian politics
occasionally provides a touch of humor to the inanities of Western moral
hypocrisy. Remember the travel ban imposed by the Conservative government on UK
MP George Galloway this spring, apparently because he is a terrorist. The
Conservative government denied it had anything to do with the decision, that it
was entirely up to the Canada Border Services Agency. Or the current furor over
US lesbian soldier Bethany Lanae Smith, whom a Canadian judge insists be
granted refugee status, overturning an Immigration and Refugee Board ruling.
Not because she rejects the illegal US wars and occupations, but because she
was harassed by male US soldiers and resented their taunts and/or untoward
advances.
The recent hemorrage of US war
resisters coming to Canada has been resolutely staunched by the pro-war
government, in line with its fervent support of US/ NATO wars. But in the
interests of political correctness, the government may well allow Smith to
stay, unlike her more principled fellow soldiers, male and female, who defected
to Canada out of conviction, and who were sent back to the US to face jail
terms.
Will there be any consequences
to Colvin for his embarrassing revelations? Word has it that the hitherto
promising career of the former second-in-command in Afghanistan and current
high-level diplomat in Washington is over. Remember the fate of Craig Murray,
the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002-2004 whom the Foreign Office tried to
declare noncompis mentis, and who resigned, supposedly in disgrace. His
altercation with the empire sobered him and made him a committed
anti-imperialist. At his site, he even posts an update of US-caused deaths in
Iraq, now at 1,339,771.
If Colvin's career as a diplomat
is over, he can still take a page from Murray's post-FO career book. His expose
of Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov as one of the world's most eminent
torturers, Murder in Samarkand, is now being made into a feature film.
He has been awarded multiple prizes for promoting world peace, ran for
parliament against his former boss foreign minister Jack Straw, and is a witty
and incisive commentator on the internet, PressTV and elsewhere. He is
currently rector of his alma mater the University of Dundee.
There is life after the death of
diplomatic service. Murray quips, "Being a dissident is quite fun."
NOTE:
Eric is a journalist and writer
for Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo. He specializes in Russian and Eurasian affairs.
Canada
ex-defense chief rejects alleged military complicity in torture of Afghans
[JURIST]
Canadian former
Amesty
International Canada and the
Canada's
Afghan whistleblower mistaken - ex-boss
OTTAWA
(Reuters) - A Canadian diplomat who says officials ignored his warnings about
the abuse of detainees handed over to Afghan authorities was mistaken, the
man's former boss told a Parliamentary committee on Thursday.
The
criticism by David Mulroney, a former top adviser in Afghanistan, comes as the
Conservative government tries hard to demolish allegations by diplomat Richard
Colvin, who testified last week that Canada's policy of prisoner transfers in
2006 and 2007 was deeply flawed and most likely illegal.
Colvin
said virtually all of the prisoners handed over to the Afghan NDS intelligence
service in 2006 and 2007 had been abused and alleged most of them had been
innocent civilians.
But
Mulroney, the senior bureaucrat in charge of the Afghan file at the time,
testified on Thursday that some of Colvin's statements were wrong.
"I
didn't agree with his assertion that everybody who went into the NDS was
tortured, that the detainees were all farmers or probably all innocent,"
Mulroney told a House of Commons committee on Afghanistan. "This is where
I think he went from an observation to speculation."
Canada
has 2,700 troops in the southern city of Kandahar on a combat mission that is
due to end in 2011. So far, 133 have been killed and public support for the
mission is waning.
The
government is refusing to release Colvin's reports on security grounds.
On
Wednesday, two top retired generals denied Colvin's allegations that Canadians
handed over detainees even though they knew there was a risk of torture. If
true, this would have been a war crime.
The
generals also said there had been nothing in Colvin's early reports to suggest
abuse was a risk -- a statement Mulroney said was true.
But
questioned vigorously by opposition legislators, he was unable to state
categorically that none of the prisoners handed over had been abused.
Government
ministers say Colvin's evidence is weak and portray him as a man who was duped
by the Taliban.
Mulroney
took a noticeably softer line, saying Colvin had put in good work under very
difficult circumstances.
(Reporting
by David Ljunggren; editing by Rob Wilson
Chief of Defence Staff [National Defence website] Rick Hillier [profile] testified in front of the House of Commons Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan [official website] on Wednesday, denouncing allegations [JURIST report] that Afghan detainees transferred from Canadian to Afghani authority were likely tortured by Afghan officials. Hellier dismissed statements made last week by Richard Colvin,who represented the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) [official website] in Kandahar from 2006-2007, accusing both the government and military of ignoring and even suppressing reports [Reuters report] of torture by Afghan authorities. Colvin, currently deputy head of intelligence at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, cited upwards of 12 memos that he sent to top officials beginning in early 2006 indicating that captives transferred from a Canadian military base in Kandahar to Afghan authorities were subsequently tortured. After reviewing the reports, Hillier insisted [CBC report] that the reports did not contain any information that would require Canadian officials to bring them to his attention.
British Columbia Civil Liberties Association [advocacy websites] filed complaints [JURIST report] in 2007 against the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal [official website], alleging complicity in torture by Canadian personnel serving in Afghanistan. Amnesty accused Canada of violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms [text] by turning Afghan detainees over to Afghan authorities without any protection against later cruel and unusual punishment. In March 2008, the Canadian Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC) [official website] decided to hold public hearings to investigate the country's detainee transfer process in Afghanistan despite a move from the Canadian Department of Justice to block the inquiry [JURIST reports]. In September, the Canadian Federal Court ruled [JURIST report] that the MPCC's authority was limited to the investigation of military police, and it did not have the authority "to investigate government policy and to inquire as to the state of knowledge of the Government of Canada at large."http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/11/canada-ex-defense-chief-rejects-alleged.phphttp://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Canada-s-Guantanamo-by-Eric-Walberg-091124-64.htmlhttp://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=101571US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is currently in Afghanistan. Even normally reserved diplomats are doing little to conceal their high expectations. "If he doesn't say anything concrete, or even names names, he will feel the wrath," said one European diplomat. "And he knows that."http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Allowing-China-a-Dominant-by-Ron-Fullwood-091123-919.htmlhttp://www.opednews.com/articles/Afgan-War-Realities-on-th-by-Josh-Mitteldorf-091124-370.html
november
27 Page 2
------------
CHECK
OUT THESE
AFGHANISTAN'S
AMNESTY LAW...
UN Afghanistan rights body urges repeal of amnesty law
[JURIST]
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA) [official website] human rights office on Thursday called on the government to repeal [UN News
Centre report] the controversial National Stability and Reconciliation Law [RFE/RL
backgrounder], which provides amnesty for war crimes and human rights
violations committed before December 2001. A representative of the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights in Afghanistan said at a press conference [transcript]:
The lack of political commitment to the justice agenda is
seen by the High Commissioner as an urgent concern exemplified by the Amnesty
Law; it was gazetted in December 2008 but it only came to light at the end of
last year. This Law relieves Afghan authorities of their obligation to
investigate and prosecute, on their own initiative, those allegedly responsible
for gross violations of human rights. It contravenes Afghanistan's obligations
under international law and it green-lights impunity and continued human rights
violations. It ignores the grievances of victims and denies them access to
justice. This Law also sends the wrong message to victims who have repeatedly
called for justice and the removal of human rights violators from public
office.
The call for repeal comes the day after the annual report [text, PDF] of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on Afghanistan was presented in Geneva to the Human Rights Council.
Earlier this month, the Afghanistan Office of the President confirmed for the first time [JURIST report] that the law had been enacted by a two-thirds passage in the Parliament, which, under the constitution, does not require the president's signature. Afghanistan's Parliament approved the controversial law in 2007, but international human rights groups only became aware of the law when it was published in Afghanistan's latest official gazette. A week before the confirmation by the Office of the President, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] urged the repeal [JURIST report] of the law. HRW called the law an "absolute disgrace" and "a slap in the face to all the Afghans who suffered for years and years of war crimes and warlordism."
and...
Afghanistan confirms enactment of war crimes pardon law
[JURIST]
The Afghanistan Office of the President [official website] openly
confirmed for the first time on Tuesday that the government has enacted a law
providing a blanket pardon for all war crimes and human rights violations
occurring before December 2001. Spokesperson Waheed Omar said that the National Stability and Reconciliation Law [RFE/RL
backgrounder] was passed in 2007 by two-thirds of the Parliament
[official website], and therefore, under the constitution, did not require the
signature of President Hamid Karzai [official profile]. The
new law has been heavily criticized by human rights groups, which became aware
of the law when it was published in Afghanistan's latest official gazette. In
an interview with Reuters [Reuters report], Asia
director for Human
Rights Watch (HRW) [official website] Brad Adams called the law an
"absolute disgrace" and "a slap in the face to all the Afghans
who suffered for years and years of war crimes and warlordism." Adams
questioned the validity of the two-year process taken to enact law, which was
passed by a parliament made up largely of former members of armed groups, some
of whom have been accused of war crimes. Adams has called on the US to pressure
Afghanistan to repeal the law stating that "the US needs to decide whether
they're with the victims or the perpetrators, and make their views known
publicly." US President Barack Obama, who held a teleconference [press release] with Karzai
on Monday concerning the "continued strategic partnership" between
the US and Afghanistan, has yet to release a statement concerning the amnesty
law.
HRW released a statement [JURIST report] last week urging the Afghan government to retract the amnesty law [press release]. HRW claims that the law protects alleged war criminals and human rights abusers, many of whom remain in positions of power within the government. The group says the law will also grant future immunity to people involved in current fighting in Afghanistan if they agree to reconciliation with the government. Supporters of the law note that criminal claims may still be brought by individuals, but HRW disputes this claim saying the court system is "barely functioning in much of the country, corruption is rampant, and there is no witness protection system."
HRW released a statement [JURIST report] last week urging the Afghan government to retract the amnesty law [press release]. HRW claims that the law protects alleged war criminals and human rights abusers, many of whom remain in positions of power within the government. The group says the law will also grant future immunity to people involved in current fighting in Afghanistan if they agree to reconciliation with the government. Supporters of the law note that criminal claims may still be brought by individuals, but HRW disputes this claim saying the court system is "barely functioning in much of the country, corruption is rampant, and there is no witness protection system."
--------------
-----------
Canada
judge to review Afghan detainee documents before release to Parliament
Zach
Zagger at 1:14 PM ET
[JURIST]
Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson [official profile] announced Friday
that a former Supreme Court of Canada [official website] judge will review
documents detailing Canadian forces' treatment of Afghan detainees before the
documents are released to Parliament [official website]. Nicholson appointed
former judge Frank Iacobucci [UToronto backgrounder] to review the documents
[CBC report] and report back to Nicholson, who will determine the conditions of
disclosure. The announcement comes amidst mounting pressure from Parliament for
the release of the documents. In December, Parliament passed an order to compel
[JURIST report] Prime Minister Stephen Harper to release the documents, and
earlier this week, some MPs considered a vote to sanction [Toronto Sun report]
high-level cabinet ministers for refusing to disclose them. MP Derek Lee
(Liberal) [official website] has criticized [press release] the refusal to
disclose the documents, which may contain evidence that detainees were
tortured.
In
December, the Canadian government released [JURIST report] more than 40
redacted e-mails [text, PDF] sent by Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin to
then-foreign minister Peter MacKay [official profile] raising concerns about
the torture of transferred detainees. The release of the e-mails came after
Colvin testified [JURIST report] before a Commons committee in November that
all enemy combatants captured in 2006 and 2007 by Canadian forces were likely
tortured upon their transfer to Afghan authorities. Throughout the spring of
2006, Colvin relayed allegations made by the International Committee of the Red
Cross [official website] that Afghan authorities were routinely torturing
detainees, and that by refusing information requests and failing to provide
timely notice of transfer to Afghan custody, the Canadian military was
hindering efforts to track Afghan detainees and monitor their treatment.
Iraq election commission orders Baghdad
ballot recount after fraud allegations
11:04 AM
ET, April 19
---------------
nov29-
p8
Red
Cross rebukes diplomat over Afghan torture allegations
KABUL,
Afghanistan — A senior Red Cross official has criticized a Canadian diplomat
for publicly alleging the organization believed Canada handed detainees over to
Afghan authorities knowing they would likely be tortured.
"What
(Richard) Colvin has said publicly has put us in an awkward situation. What he
claims to know should not be put out in a public place," said Eloi
Fillion, deputy director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in
Afghanistan, where it has a staff of 120 foreigners and 1,500 locals.
Colvin,
now deputy head of intelligence at the Canadian embassy in Washington, made
headlines this month with his allegations that the Canadian government and the
military turned a blind eye to widespread torture in Afghan jails.
The
senior diplomat said he wrote more than 12 reports while he was posted in
Afghanistan, beginning in May 2006, warning of "serious, imminent and
alarming" problems about the treatment of detainees following their
transfer by Canadian troops.
The
International Committee of the Red Cross was aware of the nature of Colvin’s
allegations and of the political furor they had caused in Canada, Fillion said.
Nevertheless, as a matter of long-standing policy, the Swiss-based organization
would not comment on them, he said Sunday.
"What
we may or may not have discussed with Canada or with Colvin was
confidential," Fillion said. "This is not specific to Canada or to
the situation in Afghanistan. We have privileged access (to detainees) because
such information is confidential.
"We
do not go public and we do not expect state representatives to go public
because this could affect access to detainees and this could then become an
issue as regards their well-being. We collect allegations and testimony
directly from victims, not from second-hand sources, so we need to have this
access. Sometimes we are the only thing between them and the authority."
But the
lawyer and French citizen indirectly cast serious doubt on whether Colvin would
have been informed if Red Cross officials had significant concerns that
Canadian soldiers or officials had violated international humanitarian laws.
"There
is a process," Fillion said. "In our relationship with Canada or any
other state, if there is a suspicion that a state representative has committed
or is about to commit a war crime or has not behaved properly in international
humanitarian law, we would discuss this with the person or persons concerned
and report this to his superiors, taking this up to the highest level that we
could.
"As
regards Canada, this would be represented to the state through the military as
well as to the state at home. Our report would go to the highest person in that
country’s hierarchical system with responsibility for international
humanitarian law."
The ICRC
would do this "by legal mandate," he said, because "we are the
guardians of international humanitarian conventions."
Asked if
such reports had been sent to Canadian authorities at any time since Canadian
combat forces arrived in Kandahar to fight the Taliban in 2006, Fillion
declined to comment, citing his organization’s policy.
"We
do reserve the right to go public when all other means are exhausted," he
said. "This has not happened in Afghanistan because we have a constructive
dialogue with all the relevant parties, including Canada. This constructive
relationship is not one-sided. It is as good with ISAF (the International Security
Assistance Force) as it is with armed opposition groups, including ethnic
militias. There is a large network of people we talk to."
Meanwhile,
Canada’s top soldier in Afghanistan said Sunday he’s confident the current
process for holding and transferring detainees has enough checks and balances
to ensure they are treated properly by Afghan authorities.
At the
Kandahar Airfield, Brig.-Gen. Daniel Menard said a combination of military and
civilian monitoring, inspections and interviews now ensures that detainees will
not be abused.
Menard,
who took over command of Task Force Kandahar earlier this month, said he meets
weekly with the Afghan head of the National Directorate of Security and holds
them accountable when necessary.
"We
can talk about specific issues. We can talk about specific detainees. This is
when we can tell them, this is what we are seeing, what are you doing about
it?" he said.
Ottawa’s
ambassador to Afghanistan, William Crosbie, said Saturday that
"nobody" from an international group responsible for the human rights
of detainees "has contacted me or anyone at the embassy regarding anything
alleging something involving Canadians in Afghanistan."
Two
senior Canadian military officers in Afghanistan who did not wish to be
identified because of confidentiality obligations that Canada has with those
responsible for detainees’ welfare, said they had never heard of the suspicions
that any of their members had violated humanitarian law conventions here.
Although
detainees do not meet the prisoner-of-war criteria as set out in the Geneva
Conventions, Canada has chosen to treat them as such.
Fillion
has much experience protecting the human rights of detainees in Afghanistan and
in other countries. He was in Taliban-ruled Kabul on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists
attacked New York and the Pentagon in Washington and has also worked in Sudan,
Iraq, Ethiopia and India.
With
files from Ryan Cormier, Edmonton Journal
----------------
nov29 p8
I tell
you... if the Canadian political parties don't stand behind the Canadian Forces
risking life and limb day in and day out in the most horrible circumstances....
they will never win another election... that's a promise.... and millions and
millions are watching (and we know all your dirty games and do not use our military
forces as your new dart board- Where the He** was the International Red Cross
(which is Swiss based and hate Jews... and we all know it-in my personal view)
for Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Iran and tons of other places... where was the UN Human
Rights and all the tribunals- which we ultimately pay their huge salaries and
bonuses. Now... the snake of terror is now spitting lies about girls being
tortured; and all kinds of bullcrap.... and we ARE NOT BUYING IT! You; as our
politicians need to truly listen up, because if you cannot be loyal to your
own... and it's all about your Canadian political party... then you really
don't know the Canadian citizenry at all... We love our Canadian Forces and we
understand their hardships... their families, their children, their home
communities... and all that they do in the name of our great country... God
Bless You all. Stop using our troops for your propaganda and the terrorists and
the media pimps who constantly need feeding for more, more, more money. We are
all soooo over this. We have a new world order.... and we are cleaning up the
garbage of terror and flushing it down in the pigs stalls... and then we are
gonna make you big and overly fat rich people give us back our decent jobs and
food on our tables and prideful care of our own.... and you are gonna cut back
on abusing the environment to keep you in your disgusting millions..... you got
that? Please. Some of our politicans are the best ever.... but you will never
win your ridings again ever... if you don't change your attitudes and
behaviours towards the Canadians you serve... you know the 99.9 per cent of us
every day country music radio kind of people... who wouldn't know one of your
polls if we fell over them... nor would we care. Clean up tv, clean up cable and
clean up your acts... and get back to the basics of serving us, the people WHO
ACTUALLY VOTE FOR YOU COME ELECTION DAY. And ... by the by... get some Winter
Olympic spirit for the young ones and us oldies... show some damn pride in
Canada. Remember... proud to be Canadian. Geeesh!
Harper
takes shot at opposition over torture allegations
NDP
plans to hold a vote in House on the need for an inquiry
PORT OF
SPAIN–Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a partisan shot at his opposition
critics while touring the HMCS Quebec in Trinidad-Tobago Sunday.
The
Canadian ship and navy officers are helping with security for the Commonwealth
summit. Harper, in brief comments to the Canadians, was addressing allegations
that Canadian civilian and military leaders ignored warnings of a risk of
torture in Afghan prisons.
"Let
me just say this: living as we do, in a time when some in the political arena
do not hesitate before throwing the most serious of allegations at our men and
women in uniform, based on the most flimsy of evidence, remember that Canadians
from coast to coast to coast are proud of you and stand behind you, and I am
proud of you, and I stand beside you."
Liberals,
the Bloc Québécois and the New Democrats are calling for an inquiry into
allegations by Richard Colvin, a former Afghanistan-based diplomat and senior
intelligence officer at Canada's embassy in Washington, that his superiors in
Canada ignored his repeated warnings from May 2006 to spring 2007 that the
detainees handed over by Canadian soldiers to Afghan authorities faced a
substantial risk of torture at the hands of Afghans, not Canadians.
The NDP
announced Sunday it will use its "opposition day" in the Commons on
Tuesday to hold a vote on the need for an inquiry.
The
Canadian military denies any knowledge of "credible" warnings of
torture before May 2007, while top civilian bureaucrat David Mulroney admitted
that there many kinds of warnings, but a lack of "hard facts" to act
on prior to May 2007 when a new prisoner transfer deal was inked.
In
recent days, Harper and his ministers have framed the controversy as an attack
on the military by the opposition, as today's comments from the Prime Minister
appeared to indicate. Opposition politicians say that they are in fact standing
up for Canadian soldiers in the face of incompetent or unclear handling of
torture allegations by the Conservative government.
nov30thNov.
30th 2
Torture: all about scoring points
Colvin’s testimony elicited the usual Ottawa question: will
it help or hurt the Liberals?
What we do these days in Ottawa is keep score. Everyone
does it. Nobody seems able to stop. The first question, in the overheated
office buildings around Parliament Hill, isn’t whether something is true or
false, a good idea or bad: it’s whether it will help the Conservatives or the
opposition. And if this week’s problem isn’t enough to knock the Harper Conservatives
off their pedestal, then everyone—the entire capital hive-mind, Conservatives,
Liberals, on-air analysts, swiftly scribbling scribes—moves on.
I prefer to believe there are a lot of Canadians who care
more whether they’re governed well or poorly than whether by Conservatives or
Liberals. The incessant scorekeeping of Hill denizens is profoundly off topic.
And never more so than when Richard Colvin testified about his attempts in 2006
and 2007 to alert the government about allegations that Afghan prisoners handed
over to Afghan authorities by Canadian Forces had been tortured.
Colvin is a career diplomat who is trusted enough, today,
by this Conservative government to serve as head of intelligence at the
Canadian Embassy in Washington. When Glyn Berry, a Canadian diplomat assigned
to the Canadian Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar, was killed by a car
bomb in 2006, it was Colvin who volunteered to replace him. This guy has
literally risked his life for his country. Of course he’s fallible like any of
us. But I think he has earned a certain amount of respect.
But first, political Ottawa had to do to Colvin’s testimony
what political Ottawa does, which is to keep score. I was on a TV panel a few
minutes after he spoke, and all around me, friends and colleagues were trying
to figure out whether Colvin’s testimony would help the Liberals in the polls.
Or whether "ordinary Canadians" could spare any sympathy for a bunch
of strangers with weird names in a desert somewhere who just happened to get carted
off to the wrong stinking hell pit. Hours later at a birthday party, one of the
hot topics of conversation was how long it would be before Michael Ignatieff’s
complex writings on torture would be used against him. (Answer: three days. The
only surprise was that it was Janine Krieber, a disgruntled Liberal political
spouse, who did it, instead of somebody from another party.)
There was a lot more of that in the days that followed.
"Attacking the government over some Taliban suspects suffering punched noses,
missing teeth, some sleepless nights and a cable-whipping or two will not be a
big heart-wrenching Liberal vote-getter to most Canadians," Don Martin
ruled in the National Post.
Well then. Nothing to see here. Just a cable-whipping or
two, although of course it was far worse than that, for far longer, inflicted
not merely on "Taliban suspects" but—this was the whole point of
Colvin’s testimony—on random farmers and merchants who just happened to be
inconveniently nearby when the time came to round up some suspects. But if it’s
not a Liberal vote-getter, well, then . . .
I don’t want to single Don out. Everyone does this.
Especially the Liberals. For four years they’ve been acting like a safecracker
with attention deficit disorder, forever looking for the combination that will
undo Harper’s 2006 election, forever outraged—for about four days at a
time—with some scandal they’ll forget before the weekend. Did he eat the
Communion wafer? Did he entice the MP to vote the right way? Are his ads
odious? Is his campaign funding shifty?
Does anyone care? No? Then the Liberals drop this week’s
outrage and move on to the next. It’s hard to escape the impression that to the
Liberals themselves, things are "right" and "wrong" only to
the extent they help Liberals crack the Harper safe.
So it was no wonder that once the Conservatives got over
casting aspersions about Colvin’s character and reliability, their next step
seemed to be to argue that the abuse of detainees was already going on before
Harper was elected in 2006, so the Conservatives didn’t have a monopoly on
abuse, so what’s the fuss?
That may well be enough to scare the Liberals off. It
shouldn’t be enough for the rest of us. Here’s the thing. Serving up random
passersby for a few nights of hell in an Afghan prison is a moral obscenity,
and I don’t give a toss which political party is in charge when it happens.
It’s also profoundly bad warfare. The goal of a counter-insurgency is to turn
the population against the insurgents. This can never be done by abusing the
population. It can only be done by ensuring that when somebody inflicts
arbitrary mayhem against the population, that somebody isn’t us.
Finally, the Harper government has shown a stubborn
incuriosity that calls into question its moral seriousness. "We have yet
to see one specific allegation of torture," Peter Van Loan, one of
Harper’s ministers, said on CTV nearly three years ago. "If they have one,
we’d be happy to chase it down." And yet not once has this government been
"happy" to "chase down" anything except the people who dare
to bring allegations to light. That attitude endangers the best execution of
our war effort. It’s not good enough, coming from a government that likes to
claim it takes war seriously. I don’t know how that will play in the polls. I
don’t care either.
COMMENT:
But this isn't just about the polls. It is about the
government maintaining some sort of control over a very murky situation. I
don't think Harper, Mackay, Hiller or anyone else condones torture, but
wrecking the whole enterprise based on some shoddy procedures and willful
ignorance is hardly helpful either, and this will surely happen if we continue
to circle around this, getting more and more exercised at the individual
tragedies our presence has caused.
As in all wars, there are a lot of moral obscenities being committed in Afghanistan in the pursuit of democracy, freedom and justice, and we are not going to get anywhere by looking for scapegoats to assuage our collective guilt.
From all that I have heard, I am actually pretty confident that those on the ground behaved as well as the situation allowed. The rest of us are just posturing.
As in all wars, there are a lot of moral obscenities being committed in Afghanistan in the pursuit of democracy, freedom and justice, and we are not going to get anywhere by looking for scapegoats to assuage our collective guilt.
From all that I have heard, I am actually pretty confident that those on the ground behaved as well as the situation allowed. The rest of us are just posturing.
COMMENT:
i don't think it is fair to say they didn't look into the
allegations.
I read the redacted memos and from what I can tell, Canadian officials routinely visited the prisons to check for verification of prisoners conditions, their prison environment, the paper records of the prison, and the excercise and food standards.
I have no doubt that prisoners were mistreated because we're talking about a stone-age country, but I also know that protocols were put in place and improved in order to monitor detainees and their conditions once they left Canadian custody.
To leave the impression that nothing was done, is just simply false.
I read the redacted memos and from what I can tell, Canadian officials routinely visited the prisons to check for verification of prisoners conditions, their prison environment, the paper records of the prison, and the excercise and food standards.
I have no doubt that prisoners were mistreated because we're talking about a stone-age country, but I also know that protocols were put in place and improved in order to monitor detainees and their conditions once they left Canadian custody.
To leave the impression that nothing was done, is just simply false.
COMMENTS:
This opinion piece might actually contribute to the debate
were it not for two significant omissions. 1. Wells employs a dissassociative
"trick", suggesting that journalists are simply dispassionate
observers of political bad behaviour, rather than the enablers they so clearly
are, and 2. Having read Blatchford's piece this morning, it's a little too
early to buy into the idea that random passersby were routinely tortured.
So.....the result is a fairly dishonest opinion piece that views things through
an Ottawa jiournalist's lense. Mr Martin and Mr Wells are birds of a feather,
no matter how much Paul would wish it were otherwise.
=======================
MCCLEANS POLL'--Nov. 30th 2
WHO SHOULD SHOULDER THE BLAME FOR THE ALLEGED TORTURE OF
SUSPECTS TRANSFERRED TO AFGHAN AUTHORITIES BY CANADIAN TROOPS?
The federal government-Ottawa Didn't do enough to prevent
it
31%
Afghanistan-they're the ones doing the torturing
29%
No one- these things happen during war
19%
There's no convincing proof the abuse ever occurred
22%
------------------------
nov. 30
CHECK OUT THIS COMMENT FROM
HUFFINGTON POST ON AFGHAN PRISONS.... ONE OF THE BEST COMMENTS YET- which is
why I am responding at all... is how I totally think like many others
"Exactly!"... the international red cross doesn't visit jails so
what's up with that ... and now all these fabrications.... you really have to
wonder about people's mindsets when they put down their own blood and side with
the people who take delight in killing them and their families... and please,
please.... you all voted President Obama... and he has done such incredible
things.... why our global youngbloods... are actually participating in world
affairs... they are listening and partaking in honest dialogue and debate and
intelligent thoughts. I find it so frustrating and difficult to understand how
Americans can drop someone they put on a pedestal so high even God has to reach
down to talk to them on one day... then tear them to pieces like rapid savages
the next. Where is the balance; patience; loyalty; participation and
factfinding and being colour blind to your personal political bias and look at
the whole picture for the good of all. That is the America that oldies like me
love and adore.... the passion, the raw energy and the teambuilding. Canada
will handle this- allegations of prisoner torture in Afghanistan by Canadian
troops and Afghan policing. We are disappointed that political backbiting (oh
how sick we are of these Canadian parties and how they will all pay come
election day in Canada) has jackknifed this issue that is as serious as even a
hit of truth may be attached- we do know there are legal holes in the
procedures of passing prisoners captured in a foreign country (Afghanistan)
under the country's (Afghanistan's) guidelines and according to international
law-UN/whatever.... and we will deal with it. And those Canadian politicians
sandbagging Canadians; or trying to, and putting our troops right there on the
ground at risk on this day because of their me, me, me... will pay, pay, pay
very, very dearly at the polls.... especially if just ONE CANADIAN TROOP DIES
IN AFGHANISTAN...over the next period- when you feed evil- like this is doing
...imagine how the snake of terror is gurgling and gigglin and hooting over
this mess... which cannot even be put to courts until this war is over.
The article is at Huffington
Post (which I rather enjoy ... and of course it is biased... what news media
isn't for God's sake? We are all intelligent and well educated... and can
breeze over the garbage to find the gold...) and take a read these are the
comments... which I find many times truly reflect the every day person. We want
this war in Afghanistan over.... NOW! and we MUST WIN it NOW! Canada has kept
Kandahar - the prize and pride and joy of the Taliban; or whichever of the six
bloody names these snakes of terror have chosen this week, and not only that...
have developed an incredible relationship with the Afghan citizens of that area
and have done incredible construction and contributions to building up that
area the way the Afghan citizen see their country. And we all want our men and
women to come home... and if we globally work together on this along with the
surrounding countries.... it will happen very soon. Iraq is now a democracy....
they can have Saddam cable and whatever.... Iraq is now a democracy... and the
Iraqi citizens will never, ever go back to what their world was during the
"Saddam" years... and that's a given. IMO.
COMMENTS:
After perusing the first 20-25 comments, it is no wonder
that Obama got elected and the vast readership of the NY Times are
anti-American, anti-military, pro-Muslim terrorist, and would welcome a Muslim
coup of Washington. Many of you are the sons and daughters who spat in the
faces of those returning from Vietnam.
Liberals are uneducated, unrealistic, illogical, and anti-American. I wish all of you would move to Western Europe, where you belong. Liberals are more concerned about the well-being of Islamic terrorists than our military, CIA, American citizens, your families etc...This rag tag group of ZZ Top looking impersonators are sitting in a cave in Pakistan or a jungle in Somalia and plotting how to acquire an atomic device in order to blow-up the New York City Subway, the Mall of America, or the Super Bowl and Liberals are worried if they're getting 3 square meals, proper lighting, and a window in their cell. Nuts!
As for visits from the Red Cross or lack there of: I thought Libs wanted them tried in US criminal courts ala K.S.M, so I don't get it. The International Red Cross doesn't visit our prisons, so why the fuss? Secondly, these terrorists are not part of any nation's or nations' army and therefore, have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. One has to be part of a nation and then join their army to have the same rights as the rest of the civilized world; that excludes al Quaeda. So either they are criminals or enemy combatants, but not subject to Geneva Conventions, visit from the Red Cross, or an extra window in their cell.
The Liberal mantra, "we're creating terrorists by having these hidden prisons," what garbage!! Yeah, that is why we were attacked on 9-11 because we had these prisons such as Gitmo in Cuba and in Kanahar, Afghanistan, oops-wait a minute, they attacked us first then came the prisons. Libs need to watch MSNBC more often, even they covered the terrorist attacks first then the prisons. Remember the Danish cartoon depicted Muslims as violent? Those Muslims really showed those Danes as a Fatwah was called for the head of the newspaper. Muslims were just so friendly until we provoked them with a cartoon.
Libs are such morons. Please move to France.
Liberals are uneducated, unrealistic, illogical, and anti-American. I wish all of you would move to Western Europe, where you belong. Liberals are more concerned about the well-being of Islamic terrorists than our military, CIA, American citizens, your families etc...This rag tag group of ZZ Top looking impersonators are sitting in a cave in Pakistan or a jungle in Somalia and plotting how to acquire an atomic device in order to blow-up the New York City Subway, the Mall of America, or the Super Bowl and Liberals are worried if they're getting 3 square meals, proper lighting, and a window in their cell. Nuts!
As for visits from the Red Cross or lack there of: I thought Libs wanted them tried in US criminal courts ala K.S.M, so I don't get it. The International Red Cross doesn't visit our prisons, so why the fuss? Secondly, these terrorists are not part of any nation's or nations' army and therefore, have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. One has to be part of a nation and then join their army to have the same rights as the rest of the civilized world; that excludes al Quaeda. So either they are criminals or enemy combatants, but not subject to Geneva Conventions, visit from the Red Cross, or an extra window in their cell.
The Liberal mantra, "we're creating terrorists by having these hidden prisons," what garbage!! Yeah, that is why we were attacked on 9-11 because we had these prisons such as Gitmo in Cuba and in Kanahar, Afghanistan, oops-wait a minute, they attacked us first then came the prisons. Libs need to watch MSNBC more often, even they covered the terrorist attacks first then the prisons. Remember the Danish cartoon depicted Muslims as violent? Those Muslims really showed those Danes as a Fatwah was called for the head of the newspaper. Muslims were just so friendly until we provoked them with a cartoon.
Libs are such morons. Please move to France.
another
The Red Cross, Amnesty International, etc. have a tendency
to go a bit too far in just about every circumstance when they aren't given
100% access when they demand it.
Secondly, of course those held aren't going to like it. Its difficult to get an accurate picture--which I believe is the point--but it seems everyone jumps to the conclusion that this is just like GITMO or abu Garab (sp).
The sad fact is that there are a lot of bad people in Afghanistan. Not just Al Qaeda, but Taliban, Narco Trafficers, War lords, etc. Afghanistan has no justice system to speak of so what is the alternative?
Its interesting how quickly liberals are willing to abandon Pres. Obama.
Secondly, of course those held aren't going to like it. Its difficult to get an accurate picture--which I believe is the point--but it seems everyone jumps to the conclusion that this is just like GITMO or abu Garab (sp).
The sad fact is that there are a lot of bad people in Afghanistan. Not just Al Qaeda, but Taliban, Narco Trafficers, War lords, etc. Afghanistan has no justice system to speak of so what is the alternative?
Its interesting how quickly liberals are willing to abandon Pres. Obama.
and...
Yea, if there hanging with the enemy, feeding them and
hiding there guns, there inocent civilians that got in the way. I take it you
don't have any family in Afghanistan or Iraq but members of my family have been
there going on six times now and I ask myself why in Gods name would they keep
volunteering to go back, and the answer always is to protect the people they
love the most, there fellow Marines and soldiers, Americans with values and
princibles you could never have or understand........Two strangers walk into a
party and tat-a-tate with our president uninvited and you talk about future
threats as if there impossible to occure
-------------------
The outright butchuring and
torture and evil these snakes have done to their own blood of blood ... and
then to have the audacity to complain about ill treatment as prisoners of the
Afghanistan people.... are u kidding me???? Who gives a care? These butchers
have murdered and plundered all and anything in their way.... they spit on the
Koran and have no souls.... they are nothing.... what a waste of precious words
and time. UN and Human Rights need to move on.... and who is paying these
people with their fancy clothes and homes etc. ... oh please..... the Canadiand
troops need to hire their own shyster- and make it one of the best and then sue
these sleezebags right on back to dismantling this whole can of maggots. The
funamentals of the UN and Human Rights started out fair... but got twisted over
screwing Israel; namely the Geneva/Swiss Red Cross... and we all know it... and
it has gone downhill and has cost our countries trillions of dollars. And we
are in a new world mode and this just don't work no more. Imagine swine flu
shots for this garbage and whining about not eating for days in protest....
whilst in a clean prison with all the privileges that our NATO trooops don't
have.... blow it out your ear. We are sooooo over youuuuu.
A BLOG... TAKE IT WHAT IT'S
WORTH... THAT'S ALL BLOGS ARE PERSONAL OPINIONS AND THOUGHTS AND SOME FACTS NEW
AND AGAIN...
HARPER WILL LET MACKAY SUCK UP
AFGHANISTAN TORTURE POISON TO PRESERVE LEADERSHIP (this so reeks of Canadian
backstabbing politics at the cost and reputation of our Canadian troops... it's
a disgrace)
The explosive allegations about transferred Canadian
prisoners being tortured by Afghani officials and the stink of a government
cover-up might initially seem detrimental to Stephen Harper. However these
events might eventually prove personally advantageous to the prime minister.
Harper’s uncharacteristic low-key role on this issue hints he is throwing his
closest rival to the wolves to fortify his leadership position.
The core of the "Torturestan" story is as
follows.
Early this month, Foreign Affairs official Richard Colvin
stated to a House of Commons committee "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." Almost
as shocking, Colvin claimed he began informing the Canadian Forces and Foreign
Affairs officials about the situation in 2006.
As the minister in charge, Peter MacKay’s first response
was to smear Colvin’s credibility and to deny ever seeing his reports. However
it now appears Mackay’s office was copied on many of Colvin's emails about
detainee transfers. Early polls show the public finds Colvin credible and are
outraged that our once peace-promoting nation might now be guilty of war
crimes. This story has legs and has the potential to be big trouble for the
government.
Besides the obvious ethical and policy implications this
story raises, political watchers might also want to consider how it affects the
domestic political scene.
The communications approach taken by the Conservative Party
on Torturestan differs from how the party usually reacts to such challenges.
Ordinarily, Stephen Harper is front and centre on all issues as he is the
cornerstone of the Conservative brand. Conservative candidates, MPs and even ministers
are routinely muzzled in order to maximize brand focus, often with ruthless
discipline. But on this issue, not only is Harper not front and centre, he was
not even present to blunt the opposition attacks during an initial House of
Commons question period. Instead Harper was presenting jerseys to our national
lacrosse team. Harper’s slight smile captured in an event photo might be less
about his love for athletics and more about the moves he is making in the sport
of internal party politics.
Where polls and elections are about all voters, internal
party politics concerns members and donors with party leaders needing to show
constant growth to maintain their positions. Until now Harper has delivered for
his party. In 2004, he won 99 seats, led a reborn Conservative Party to
official opposition status and reduced the longstanding Liberal government to a
minority. In 2006, Harper became a minority Prime Minister by winning 104
seats. In 2008, he maintained his minority status by increasing his seat total
to 143.
This growth is indeed impressive, but all party leaders are
constantly subject to ‘what have you done for me lately’ criticism. The next
election is critical for Harper and he needs to win a majority or face dissent
in the ranks. If Harper fails to secure a majority, party insiders will begin
to look for successors, basing their decision on whether to push out Harper
according to the estimated strength of any potential new leader.
Before this incident Peter Mackay was no doubt Harper’s
strongest potential leadership challenger. Mackay is a political rock star with
keen media savvy and the money and connections needed to (once again) lead the
Conservatives. Painfully aware of his older-but-uglier sibling status, Harper's
back seat position will enable most of the scandal to stick to Mackay and his
ministry, not Harper or the government as a whole. By morphing Torturestan from
a party problem to a personal problem for Mackay Harper preserves the
Conservative brand and undermines Mackay’s future leadership challenge. Watch
for a lot more Mackay and a whole lot less of Harper on this one.
COMMENTS:
I'm sorry you feel that way, but the rules are explicit for
the terms of NATO troops being allowed to operate as guests of the Afghan
government. Captured Afghan nationals must be turned over to the government for
interrogation and holding. Quite simply put, it isn't our business to detain or
prosecute these people.
COMMENTS:
How quickly the Liberals line up. This is only a major
scandal to anyone with a Liberal Party card. The Liberals appear to know the
term Geneva Convention but they ignore the fact that it doesn't apply and that
we are supposedly "helping" the Afghans in theier country, or isn't
that what the Liberals committed Canada to. They throw any mud at Canada and
its military in the hope of smearing Canada.
And their pittiful partners!!
How much easier and comfortable and safer it is to be a
champion of HUMAN RIGHTS protesting and ranting in Canada about Canada!!!
-----------------------
Go Away...the US isn't falling for it and neither are we -
go away.
Canada denies role in torture of Ottawa man
OTTAWA — The Canadian government says it bears no legal
responsibility for the detention and torture in Syria of Ottawa's Abdullah
Almalki, and will not compensate him for his ordeal.
Almalki, a Carleton University engineering graduate and
father of six, is suing the federal government for $60 million. His family is
seeking an additional $40 million in damages.
Almalki claims Canadian officials contributed to his ordeal
by sending false, inflammatory information about him to foreign security
services. Two federal inquiries have established that the RCMP also sent
questions for Almalki directly to the Syrians while he was in custody, even
though they were warned about the possibility of torture.
In its statement of defence recently filed in Ontario
Superior Court, the federal government denies any wrongdoing.
It acknowledges the RCMP sent letters to foreign agencies
in October 2001, requesting information about Almalki. The letters described
him as "linked through association to al-Qaida" and an "imminent
threat" — descriptions believed to be accurate and reliable at the time,
the government claims.
"Canadian officials played no role in Almalki's
detention in Syria," the court document says. "They did not request
that he be detained, nor did they support his detention when they became aware
of it."
Government lawyers say they don't know whether Almalki was
tortured and, to the extent he was mistreated, Syrian authorities are
responsible.
The defence stands at odds with the conclusions of two
judicial inquiries, Almalki charged in an interview Tuesday.
"After all these inquiries, reports and hearings, they
still deny any wrongdoing: it's appalling," said Almalki, who spent 22
months in prison until being cleared and released by the Syrians in March 2004.
He has never been charged with a crime in Canada.
"What will it take for the government to acknowledge
the harm it has inflicted on myself and my family?" he asked.
When he first filed his lawsuit in 2006, Almalki sought $15
million in damages. He has since refiled the claim for $100 million to
highlight the "atrociousness" of torture, he said.
"What I would like to get at the end is an apology and
a fair compensation."
In 2007, the government apologized to Ottawa communications
engineer Maher Arar for his torture ordeal and paid him $10.5 million. Arar was
deported from the U.S. to Syria, partly on the strength of faulty Canadian
intelligence, according to a federal inquiry.
A second inquiry, headed by former Supreme Court Justice
Frank Iacobucci, examined Canada's role in the cases of three other
Arab-Canadians detained and tortured in Syria: Almalki, Ahmad El-Maati and Muayyed
Nureddin.
In his report, issued one year ago, Iacobucci found that
Canadian officials repeatedly failed to accurately label the men in shared
intelligence reports.
He concluded Canadian officials conscientiously carried out
their duties under intense pressure post-9/11, but made mistakes that likely
contributed to mistreatment suffered by the men.
Iacobucci affirmed through interviews and medical records
that the three men had been tortured overseas.
The federal government has denied legal responsibility, and
rejected compensation claims in civil suits filed by all three of the Canadian
torture victims.
Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International
Canada, called the defence in the Almalki case "absurd."
"We would have expected a response from the government
that recognizes how important it is to bring this long-standing human-rights
tragedy to an end," he said.
The government's legal stand, Neve said, makes it unclear
whether it accepts the findings and recommendations of its own judicial
inquiries.
"We should have some action by now," he said.
"We should be able to confidently point to the ways in which reforms and
implementation are going ahead, but we can't."
Two inquiry reports have confirmed the RCMP sent Syrian
authorities questions for Almalki while he was custody, even though El-Maati
had already warned federal officials that he had been tortured in the same
prison. At least one foreign affairs official also raised the possibility with
the RCMP that Almalki would be tortured for his answers.
In its statement of defence, the government maintains the
Almalki questions were part of a legitimate police investigation, but were
never put to him in Syria.
In his report, Judge Iacobucci criticized the RCMP for
sending the questions. He said that decision was not warranted by concerns
about an imminent threat to Canada, and likely contributed to Almalki's
mistreatment in Syria.
The civil suit in the Almalki case is expected to soon
proceed to mediation.
---------------------------
Well
this is a different view
An
Afghan ghost of Abu Ghraib?
Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star repeats her theory about
the origins of the Afghan detainee mess:
Disdain for U.S. led to Afghan torture fiasco
Perhaps convenient amnesia has set in. But few of those clawing at their faces today in angst and shame over who-knew-what-when-generated hysteria with regard to mistreatment of Afghan detainees have paused to recall how this mess originated.
It's because Canada picked Afghans over Americans as front-line allies.
This was not done out of respect for Afghan sovereignty – their right to assume custody of prisoners captured on their own soil. Damn well known from the start was the lay of the land in a war-ravaged country and medieval society: jails of unimaginable wretchedness, guards desensitized to violence and cruelty who'd never heard of the Geneva Conventions and would double over in laughter if informed of its contents, no justice system to speak of, and the overwhelming power exerted by the feared National Directorate of Security whose torturer-in-chief, while denying any physical abuse of detainees, once told the Star that "interrogation is not negotiation, it's not chatting over coffee."
It was a disastrous decision and, despite probing repeatedly at it over several years, I've never been able to ascertain, indisputably, who was to blame as primary architect of the policy, nor why it was thus constructed...
The original agreement was crafted against the miserable backdrop of Abu Ghraib, a scandal of shocking proportions that had exploded in the U.S. media a year previous. Given the toxic view of American forces – no matter that the horrific mistreatment of Iraqi detainees was, at least in terms of supporting evidence, limited to specific rogue units in one notorious facility – it was clearly decided, by who knows whom, Canada could not put detainees in such soiled hands, despite the U.S. being this country's closest nation-friend.
Someone bought into the dubious premise that the entire American military was not to be trusted and that Afghan wardens, Afghan guards, Afghan officials, were preferable partners in the disposition of detainees, although the only remotely up-to-Western-par prison facility was at the American base in Bagram.
Canada did not have the resources to build its own detention facility in Kandahar. And, even if such a building could have been constructed, there was no way to staff it with our own rights-conscious people. If such a prison had ever been erected, it would still have been placed in Afghan hands for management because that has been, throughout, the Canadian/ISAF mantra – Afghan-led everything...
This is the one note that rings untrue in the whistle-blowing memos distributed by diplomat Richard Colvin — a contention that the insurgency would gain impetus because Afghans were outraged by the torture of the detainees. While it certainly has been used as a recruiting tool by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, few Afghans beyond the families of those incarcerated – often without legitimate cause, since so many were subsequently released – have much pity for Taliban rank-and-file. They are too busy simply trying to survive poverty and chronic violence.
So let's be clear: This isn't about Afghans, it's about us – what we deem the standards of conduct should be, even in a lawless, chaotic hellhole like Afghanistan.
Colvin has done nothing to deserve the character assassination unleashed last week by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's pitbulls. He appears to have tried to fulfill diplomatic responsibility with integrity. But he is colossally naive if truly believing the mission's merits were contaminated by the detainee sidebar...
Perhaps convenient amnesia has set in. But few of those clawing at their faces today in angst and shame over who-knew-what-when-generated hysteria with regard to mistreatment of Afghan detainees have paused to recall how this mess originated.
It's because Canada picked Afghans over Americans as front-line allies.
This was not done out of respect for Afghan sovereignty – their right to assume custody of prisoners captured on their own soil. Damn well known from the start was the lay of the land in a war-ravaged country and medieval society: jails of unimaginable wretchedness, guards desensitized to violence and cruelty who'd never heard of the Geneva Conventions and would double over in laughter if informed of its contents, no justice system to speak of, and the overwhelming power exerted by the feared National Directorate of Security whose torturer-in-chief, while denying any physical abuse of detainees, once told the Star that "interrogation is not negotiation, it's not chatting over coffee."
It was a disastrous decision and, despite probing repeatedly at it over several years, I've never been able to ascertain, indisputably, who was to blame as primary architect of the policy, nor why it was thus constructed...
The original agreement was crafted against the miserable backdrop of Abu Ghraib, a scandal of shocking proportions that had exploded in the U.S. media a year previous. Given the toxic view of American forces – no matter that the horrific mistreatment of Iraqi detainees was, at least in terms of supporting evidence, limited to specific rogue units in one notorious facility – it was clearly decided, by who knows whom, Canada could not put detainees in such soiled hands, despite the U.S. being this country's closest nation-friend.
Someone bought into the dubious premise that the entire American military was not to be trusted and that Afghan wardens, Afghan guards, Afghan officials, were preferable partners in the disposition of detainees, although the only remotely up-to-Western-par prison facility was at the American base in Bagram.
Canada did not have the resources to build its own detention facility in Kandahar. And, even if such a building could have been constructed, there was no way to staff it with our own rights-conscious people. If such a prison had ever been erected, it would still have been placed in Afghan hands for management because that has been, throughout, the Canadian/ISAF mantra – Afghan-led everything...
This is the one note that rings untrue in the whistle-blowing memos distributed by diplomat Richard Colvin — a contention that the insurgency would gain impetus because Afghans were outraged by the torture of the detainees. While it certainly has been used as a recruiting tool by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, few Afghans beyond the families of those incarcerated – often without legitimate cause, since so many were subsequently released – have much pity for Taliban rank-and-file. They are too busy simply trying to survive poverty and chronic violence.
So let's be clear: This isn't about Afghans, it's about us – what we deem the standards of conduct should be, even in a lawless, chaotic hellhole like Afghanistan.
Colvin has done nothing to deserve the character assassination unleashed last week by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's pitbulls. He appears to have tried to fulfill diplomatic responsibility with integrity. But he is colossally naive if truly believing the mission's merits were contaminated by the detainee sidebar...
november
25 page 9
-------------
John
Ivison: Canada's blind spot on terrorism
What
would happen if Osama bin Laden washed up on the coast of Vancouver Island in a
rusting old hulk and claimed asylum? If it was left to our immigration system,
he'd share the same fate as the one that probably awaits the 76 Sri Lankan
Tamils who arrived in Canada last month aboard the Princess Easwary -- that is,
he'd walk free, be set up in a hotel, told he was entitled to work and handed a
welfare cheque.
As with
the Tamils, bin Laden would initially be detained by the Canada Border Services
Agency and then obliged to appear before an Immigration and Refugee Board
review hearing to establish his identity.
As with
the Tamils, the Minister of Public Safety would likely ask the IRB to detain
him while it investigated whether there was "reasonable suspicion" of
inadmissability on security grounds.
As with
many of the Tamils, the al-Qaeda leader would probably find his refugee claim
turned down -- in their case, on the basis that many of them are suspected of
being Tamil Tigers, seeking to regroup and rebuild their terror organization in
Canada (traces of explosives have been found on the migrant ship, while one
expert said it is owned by the Tigers); in his, because he is the world's most
wanted man.
Yet in
both cases, any attempt to deport them back to whence they came would likely founder
on the grounds that they would be tortured in their home countries. Removal to
torture is not only inconsistent with Canada's international obligations, it
very likely violates our constitution. Regardless of the alleged atrocities an
individual may have committed, a pre-removal risk assessment by the federal
department of Citizenship and Immigration trumps all other evidence.
This
comparison is, of course, more than slightly facetious. In all likelihood, the
immigration process would not come into play against the al-Qaeda leader, who
would probably be thrown in jail on arrival under the Criminal Code and charged
with crimes against humanity.
But it
does show how bankrupt the immigration process has become when it comes to
dealing with terrorist suspects.
In the
days of yore -- that is, up until last month -- the government had the option
of detaining and deporting foreign nationals it suspected of violating human
rights or being a threat to national security, through the issuance of a
security certificate. However, the case of Adil Charkaoui, a Moroccan living in
Montreal, which collapsed in court last month has, in the eyes of many security
experts, killed the security certificate as a tool against terrorism. Mr.
Charkaoui's security certificate was lifted after the government withdrew
evidence that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service deemed too sensitive
to be disclosed publicly, as the Federal Court had demanded.
Richard
Fadden, director of CSIS, expressed his frustration in a recent speech, saying
the court's decision posed the agency with a fundamental dilemma: "To
disclose information that would have given would-be terrorists a virtual road
map to our tradecraft and sources; or to withdraw that information from the
case, causing a security certificate to collapse." The implication is that
no new security certificates will be sought any time soon.
The
collapse of the Charkaoui case has led some experts to say that it is time for
the government to come up with a Plan B and shift the emphasis in the fight
against terror toward the Criminal Code. Craig Forcese, who teaches national
security law at the University of Ottawa's law school, said that a number of
terror provisions introduced since 9/11 have extra-territorial reach and can be
applied to crimes committed overseas.
"The
next stage is to finance law enforcement to use those provisions that have been
on the books since 2001," said Mr. Forcese. "At the moment, their use
is comparatively uncommon, compared to the U.S. or U.K."
A similar
argument was made last month in a speech by William Elliott, the RCMP
Commissioner, who said he believes law enforcement and criminal prosecution
will be the "new paradigm of national security" in Canada and
elsewhere. However, he noted that the Mounties would have to increase their
"investigative capacity, including our capacity to conduct and support
extra-territorial investigations".
In his
plea for more resources, Mr. Elliott said the RCMP has received only a
"small portion" of the billions spent by successive governments on
national security since 9/11 and questioned whether the focus on enhanced
security has overshadowed the role of law enforcement. "We need greater
capacity to put more terrorism cases before the courts and more terrorists in
jail," he said.
This
might seem to be one of those motherhood claims with which it is hard to argue.
Except that cases in open court clearly militate against the use of secret
evidence, such as that which CSIS deemed was too sensitive to reveal in the
Charkaoui case.
As James
Bissett, a former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service, put
it: "We get information from foreign intelligence services on the basis
that it isn't made public. It has worked very well in the past and is only used
in the most serious of cases."
Another
knock on a system that relies entirely on law enforcement is that the
evidentiary threshold in immigration cases is much lower - the government wins
if it can show "reasonable suspicion", whereas in a criminal case it
must prove the allegation beyond a reasonable doubt.
Finally,
amassing evidence in a criminal case concerning events that took place outside
Canada is very expensive -- the recent Rwandan war crimes trial of Desire
Munyaneza in Montreal took place in five countries over two years and cost
millions of dollars.
There
certainly seems to be enough grounds in the case of some of the Tamil migrants
to warrant "reasonable suspicion" they were linked to a terrorist
organization -- one man is even said to sport a Tamil Tiger tattoo.
Whether
those suspicions can be proven beyond reasonable doubt in a timely and
cost-effective manner is another matter. History suggests that the majority of
the Tamil migrants will be released and that many will have disappeared by the
time their refugee hearings come up in three or four years. As Mr. Bissett
said: "The system is totally out of control."
Mr.
Fadden said he believes that Canada as a country has a "serious blind
spot" when it comes to terrorism. "Many of our opinion leaders have
come to see the fight against terrorism not as defending democracy and our
values, but as attacking them. Almost any attempt to fight terrorism by the
government is portrayed as an overreaction or an assault on liberty."
The
government has been caught off-guard by the Charkaoui case and is still
reviewing its implications. But the Conservatives must be bold and come up with
some form of legislative response that shows that the government, and not
courts who believe civil liberties trump security, are setting the agenda in
the fight against terror.
COMMENT:
The polical left will never allow Harper to come down hard on suspected terrorists, the left have forced Canadians to embrace immigrants who hate us and our nation but love our social programs. We've had a city taken hostage by the Tigers, as they regroup and plan to wage another attack on SL we do nothing. We have Political Islamists using arms of the government to enforce Sharia Law. This country has opened it's arms and embraced terrorists like a long lost child, there is no way the political left will allow Harper to deal with the mess they constructed for votes. Not going to happen.
COMMENT:
Mohammad Issa Mohammad owns the current record for fiddling the ridiculously inept Canadian immigration system. In 1968 he and another terrorist attacked an El Al airliner in Athens, murdered a passenger and destroyed the plane. Sentenced to 17-years in prison, he was released later that year when terrorists seized another airliner and threatened to kill all aboard unless he was freed.
Mohammad
and his family reached Canada as landed immigrants in 1987 by denying he had
been convicted of any crime. A year later immigration authorities checked his
story and, realizing he is a convicted terrorist, moved to deport him. He
retroactively applied for refugee status. Notwithstanding his claim was
rejected he has successfully gamed the system for 21-years with inexhaustible
appeals and lives in Brantford, Ontario.
-----------
-----------
Page
1-November 25 pm
A better way to the truth of the detainee matter
Let the Military Police Complaints Commission, an
independent, quasi-judicial agency, investigate the charges
Lewis MacKenzie
Once again, and to no surprise, "gotcha" politics
has reared its ugly head on Parliament Hill.
The evidence given by foreign service officer Richard Colvin to a House of Commons committee regarding alleged abuse and even torture of Canadian-captured detainees by Afghan prison authorities has consumed Question Period for days. Serious discussions of the mission in Afghanistan, long overdue, have been thwarted by questions regarding who knew what and when.
With due respect, a Commons committee is probably one of the worst forums to deal with the matter of prisoner abuse and potential Canadian complicity. Names of highly respected individuals have been dragged through the mud with no chance to defend themselves. Statements made by witnesses, including Mr. Colvin, are accepted by some and rejected by others, and the opinions of committee members are entirely predictable, depending on their political affiliation.
Unchallenged statements have made the headlines in the popular press. "Nearly 600 detainees may have been turned over to Afghan security forces." This fact, which should be a source of pride, is described as "six times as many detainees" as the British handed over in the same period.
There is a pretty good reason for the big difference. The British weren't in Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan during a good deal of that same period. Parliamentary debate in Britain and the Netherlands delayed the troops' arrival by several months.
The tardy arrival of British and Dutch contingents also delayed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters, dictating that the Canadian battle group operate for the first half of 2006 as a component of the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom.
Also contributing to the difference in the numbers of prisoners handed over, and contrary to many recent erroneous opinions on the subject, Helmand province was relatively quiet when the British contingent arrived. Meanwhile, the Canadian battle group had been fighting battles with the Taliban in Kandahar for more than four months, taking a lot of prisoners.
When the NATO headquarters assumed command in the south on July 31, 2006, surprisingly, there was no alliance policy for the handling of detainees other than holding them for no more than 96 hours before releasing them or handing them over to Afghan authorities. It was left to each of the member nations to decide on any follow-up action.
Turning prisoners over to the authorities of the sovereign nation that the United Nations and NATO had come to support was certainly not an unreasonable decision. After the suicide-bomber killing of diplomat Glyn Berry, there was a dearth of Canadian civilians serving in Afghanistan, particularly in the south. Canadians were fighting major battles and the objective was to remove as many Taliban from the Canadian area of responsibility as possible. After an initial interrogation, those who were captured were transferred to Afghan authorities.
As evidence surfaced suggesting that prisoners were being abused, Canada developed a new protocol, implemented in May of 2007, that included monitoring the location of detainees in the prison system, follow-up interviews with them and frequent visits to Afghan prisons (more than 180 in the past 18 months) by qualified personnel.
Returning to the issue of hope trumping common sense as we wait for the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan to treat the detainee matter in a non-partisan way, there is a much better solution staring us in the face.
In the wake of the Somalia inquiry and resulting reviews of Canadian Forces policy, the Military Police Complaints Commission, an independent, quasi-judicial agency, was established in 1998.
Two and a half years ago, two complaints regarding the very issue currently being debated in Parliament were filed with the MPCC. Its efforts to proceed in a timely manner have been thwarted as lawyers on both sides argued whether the MPCC's mandate permitted it to investigate the charges that the Canadian Military Police turned detainees over to Afghan authorities knowing they would be abused. It was judged that the issue was an operational matter and not within the commission's jurisdiction. The hearings were suspended a few weeks back.
A public inquiry would be a colossal waste of taxpayers' money. The government should put the file back into the MPCC's lap and direct all players to co-operate. The commission has the highly qualified staff necessary to get to the truth of the matter in the most cost-effective manner.
Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie was first commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo.
The evidence given by foreign service officer Richard Colvin to a House of Commons committee regarding alleged abuse and even torture of Canadian-captured detainees by Afghan prison authorities has consumed Question Period for days. Serious discussions of the mission in Afghanistan, long overdue, have been thwarted by questions regarding who knew what and when.
With due respect, a Commons committee is probably one of the worst forums to deal with the matter of prisoner abuse and potential Canadian complicity. Names of highly respected individuals have been dragged through the mud with no chance to defend themselves. Statements made by witnesses, including Mr. Colvin, are accepted by some and rejected by others, and the opinions of committee members are entirely predictable, depending on their political affiliation.
Unchallenged statements have made the headlines in the popular press. "Nearly 600 detainees may have been turned over to Afghan security forces." This fact, which should be a source of pride, is described as "six times as many detainees" as the British handed over in the same period.
There is a pretty good reason for the big difference. The British weren't in Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan during a good deal of that same period. Parliamentary debate in Britain and the Netherlands delayed the troops' arrival by several months.
The tardy arrival of British and Dutch contingents also delayed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters, dictating that the Canadian battle group operate for the first half of 2006 as a component of the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom.
Also contributing to the difference in the numbers of prisoners handed over, and contrary to many recent erroneous opinions on the subject, Helmand province was relatively quiet when the British contingent arrived. Meanwhile, the Canadian battle group had been fighting battles with the Taliban in Kandahar for more than four months, taking a lot of prisoners.
When the NATO headquarters assumed command in the south on July 31, 2006, surprisingly, there was no alliance policy for the handling of detainees other than holding them for no more than 96 hours before releasing them or handing them over to Afghan authorities. It was left to each of the member nations to decide on any follow-up action.
Turning prisoners over to the authorities of the sovereign nation that the United Nations and NATO had come to support was certainly not an unreasonable decision. After the suicide-bomber killing of diplomat Glyn Berry, there was a dearth of Canadian civilians serving in Afghanistan, particularly in the south. Canadians were fighting major battles and the objective was to remove as many Taliban from the Canadian area of responsibility as possible. After an initial interrogation, those who were captured were transferred to Afghan authorities.
As evidence surfaced suggesting that prisoners were being abused, Canada developed a new protocol, implemented in May of 2007, that included monitoring the location of detainees in the prison system, follow-up interviews with them and frequent visits to Afghan prisons (more than 180 in the past 18 months) by qualified personnel.
Returning to the issue of hope trumping common sense as we wait for the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan to treat the detainee matter in a non-partisan way, there is a much better solution staring us in the face.
In the wake of the Somalia inquiry and resulting reviews of Canadian Forces policy, the Military Police Complaints Commission, an independent, quasi-judicial agency, was established in 1998.
Two and a half years ago, two complaints regarding the very issue currently being debated in Parliament were filed with the MPCC. Its efforts to proceed in a timely manner have been thwarted as lawyers on both sides argued whether the MPCC's mandate permitted it to investigate the charges that the Canadian Military Police turned detainees over to Afghan authorities knowing they would be abused. It was judged that the issue was an operational matter and not within the commission's jurisdiction. The hearings were suspended a few weeks back.
A public inquiry would be a colossal waste of taxpayers' money. The government should put the file back into the MPCC's lap and direct all players to co-operate. The commission has the highly qualified staff necessary to get to the truth of the matter in the most cost-effective manner.
Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie was first commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Sarajevo.
------------
Cartoon
Andy...
HIghway
of Heroes... bringing another Canadian son home... sentence.... "It' hard
to believe Canadian Troops are handing taliban fighters over to afghan
officials and their being tortured.
bottome
of the page>>> IF THE ABOVE STATEMENT UPSETS YOU THEN YOU SHOULD GO
OUT AND STAND ON THE HIGHWAY OF HEROES AND REPEAT THE STATEMENT 133 TIMES.
___________________________
Next
we'll be given the snake of terror sponge baths and handfeeding them grapes and
lobster....in those fancy elite prisons we are builting them with our tax
dollars.... and you can call it NATO, UN whatever... the money coming to built
these castles in the air... is off the backs of the working women and men like
you and me. I truly believe that... so is the money paying for these fancy
lawyers and rights groups that give not one damn about the everyday person on
the street trying to make a living for their famlies. We really need to start
protecting each other and our rights of the masses.... we just get poorer and poorer-
the banks stole trillions of our money... and we are still living on bread and
water barely gettin by it seem. What about the man and women wearing our
uniforms of our countries.... who's looking out for them besides the millions
and millions of us - with our hearts breaking each and every darn day- seeing
such injustice.
Press
Conference to Outline Steps to Investigate Detainee Issue Set For Tuesday
The
government must investigate the allegations of torture of prisoners captured by
Canadian forces transferred to Afghan authorities, say Amnesty International
Canada and the British Colombia Civil Liberties Association. The steps in the
process that needs to be undertaken will be outlined at press conference on
Tuesday.
More
from these two organizations:
Amnesty International Canada and the British Colombia Civil Liberties Association have consistently raised the issue of the implications of these transfers. In February 2007 a case was launching for a judicial review of the actions of Canadian forces regarding these transfers, in view of the possibility of torture and ill treatment, as a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada’s international human rights obligations
nov...
25..
---------------------
IMAGINE...
OUR BELOVED TROOOPS BEING BUTCHERED/TORTURED/HEADS CUT OFF head hung on top of
poles.... and children and mothers butchered for a 10 second media bite.... ...
AND THE MOST UGLY THINGS THAT CAN HAPPEN TO A HUMAN... YET...we give these
butchers who spit on the Koran... grand castles called prisions, 3squares,
clean beds, showers, prayer, education tv, great food, exercise... and OUR
TROOPS DON'T EVEN HAVE KITS/ BLANKETS/TEA/FOOD/WATER/ TOOTHPASTE/ SHOWER
FACILITIES/ REC CENTRE FOR DOWNTIME/PRAYER TIME AND BLANKETS-..... DO YOU HEAR
THAT.... THAT'S THE WORLD WAKING UP AND ROARING IN ANGER...... THESE NATO
TROOPS HAVE GIVEN SO MUCH.... AND THESE MURDERING PRISIONERS BECOME MOVIE STARS
AND SUCH...... welll no damn more!
Michael
Ignatieff on torture: Be careful what you wish for
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NOVEMBER 24, 2009
REALITY CHECK: Join Ignatieff's Book Club on Torture
Yesterday in scrums, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff attempted to dismiss charges of hypocrisy against him, by challenging reporters to examine his well known statements about the appropriate use of torture:
"I did twenty minutes [sic] of journalism on protecting human rights, I have no explanations to make here, I have always been against torture. If you would take the trouble to read what I have said, you will see that it's a terrible accusation." - Michael Ignatieff, CTV News Channel, 23 November 2009
Okay. Let's take him up on that:
ON WHEN TORTURE ISN'T EVIL
"...in a situation of extreme necessity, the possibility, even a slight possibility, that it [torture] may reveal some life saving result would almost certainly overwhelm any consideration that it is evil." - Michael Ignatieff, The Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, January 2003
ON HOW DEMOCRACIES SHOULD JUSTIFY TORTURE
"The use of coercive force in a liberal democracy...is regarded as a lesser evil. This particular view of democracy does not prohibit emergency suspensions of rights in times of terror. But it imposes an obligation on government to justify such measures publicly, to submit them to judicial review, and to circumscribe them with sunset clauses so that they do not become permanent." - Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political ethics in an age of terror, Princeton University Press, 2004
But don't just take our word for it, Ignatieff's writings on the appropriate use of torture are of concern to Liberals as well:
"To justify violence, he must have really given it serious thought. Otherwise, that's very dangerous. What guarantee would there be that he wouldn't change his mind again?" - Terrorism and counter-terrorism scholar Dr. Janine Krieber, Facebook message as reprinted in Toronto Star, 21 November 2009
COMMENT:
NOVEMBER 24, 2009
REALITY CHECK: Join Ignatieff's Book Club on Torture
Yesterday in scrums, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff attempted to dismiss charges of hypocrisy against him, by challenging reporters to examine his well known statements about the appropriate use of torture:
"I did twenty minutes [sic] of journalism on protecting human rights, I have no explanations to make here, I have always been against torture. If you would take the trouble to read what I have said, you will see that it's a terrible accusation." - Michael Ignatieff, CTV News Channel, 23 November 2009
Okay. Let's take him up on that:
ON WHEN TORTURE ISN'T EVIL
"...in a situation of extreme necessity, the possibility, even a slight possibility, that it [torture] may reveal some life saving result would almost certainly overwhelm any consideration that it is evil." - Michael Ignatieff, The Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, January 2003
ON HOW DEMOCRACIES SHOULD JUSTIFY TORTURE
"The use of coercive force in a liberal democracy...is regarded as a lesser evil. This particular view of democracy does not prohibit emergency suspensions of rights in times of terror. But it imposes an obligation on government to justify such measures publicly, to submit them to judicial review, and to circumscribe them with sunset clauses so that they do not become permanent." - Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political ethics in an age of terror, Princeton University Press, 2004
But don't just take our word for it, Ignatieff's writings on the appropriate use of torture are of concern to Liberals as well:
"To justify violence, he must have really given it serious thought. Otherwise, that's very dangerous. What guarantee would there be that he wouldn't change his mind again?" - Terrorism and counter-terrorism scholar Dr. Janine Krieber, Facebook message as reprinted in Toronto Star, 21 November 2009
COMMENT:
Right
now it is the Canadian public that is being tortured by this never ending
crusade about terrorist prisoners while our young people are dieing at their
hands. It takes a lot to make any Canadian think that a Canadian government
would authorize torture no matter how right wing and that a brave great
military like ours would turn them over to have it carried it out without a
quibble.The diplomat who started this showed no guts if he thought torture was
being done he should have called a news conference of the world press at the
time and retired. Instead he accepted a promotion Phony?
---------------
november
22 /23 p1
Canada
rules out probe of possible Afghanistan torture
Canada's
government on Thursday dismissed opposition demands for a public inquiry into
claims that troops in Afghanistan handed detainees over to local officials who
were believed to torture.
The main
opposition parties made the demand after Richard Colvin, a Canadian diplomat
stationed in Afghanistan at the time of the alleged abuse, told lawmakers there
was a "likelihood" that Canadian forces broke international law.
Colvin
maintained Canadian forces "detained, and handed over for severe torture,
a lot of innocent people."The number two in the Liberal Party, Bob Rae,
has since demanded a public inquiry "to clear the air and clear the cloud
over this government."
His call
was backed by the leftist New Democratic Party and the independent Bloc
Quebecois.
"You
can't function, you can't restore the credibility of this great country
internationally unless you hold a judicial public inquiry," Rae told
reporters outside the House of Commons.
Bloc
Quebecois chief Gilles Duceppe went further, saying that "if they (the
Canadian government) knew what was going on, it's going against the Geneva
Conventions, and this is a war crime."
The
Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has stood firm in the
face of the withering attacks, rejecting any investigation.
"It's
not acceptable," Defense Minister Peter MacKay said Thursday. "What I
heard yesterday doesn't stand the test of cross examination, doesn't stand the
test of credibility," he said of Colvin's testimony before a special
parliamentary committee.
MacKay
added that much of the evidence advanced by Colvin, now an intelligence liaison
officer at the Canadian embassy in Washington, was hearsay.
"We're
talking about basing much of his evidence on what the Taliban have been
specifically instructed to lie about if captured," MacKay said.
Colvin
worked for Canada's Foreign Affairs department in Kandahar in 2006 and was
later promoted to second-in-command at the embassy in Kabul until late 2007.
In both
jobs he visited detainees transferred by Canadian soldiers to Afghan prisons
and reported his findings to Ottawa.
He
claimed the warnings, first delivered in spring 2006, were ignored by senior
military commanders and government officials, until prisoner mistreatment
allegations were reported in the media a year later.
Colvin
said he was eventually told to stop putting his reports into writing.
The
Canadian government, which has some 2,800 troops in southeastern Afghanistan,
has denied there is any firm evidence that detainees transferred by its
officials were tortured.
Conservative
members of parliament dismissed Colvin's testimony as not credible, saying it
was based on second- and third-hand information, according to public
broadcaster CBC.
--------
25 June
2008 5:44 pm
Posted
by: Hilary Homes
In his
very first opportunity to engage with the media, Omar Khadr was asked 6
questions by the CBC. Though the questions and answers were screened by
military censors – and some issues such as his court case were off limits – it
nonetheless provides some insight into a young man who has spent more than a
quarter of his life in detention in Guantánamo Bay.
-------------------
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