OTTAWA — The Canadian government refused to take problems with the treatment of Afghan detainees seriously, ignoring evidence of problems that were apparent as early as May 2006, according to a new document made public Thursday.
In an exit memo he drafted but never sent, diplomat Richard Colvin said hyper-secrecy and politicization of reporting plagued the handling of the Afghan mission. For example, Canadian officials were told to be “very careful” about what they put in their human rights reports while embassy staff were told things were going better — even when it wasn’t.
“I have never before in my 15-year career been told that, internally, we must lie to each other,” Colvin wrote in the frankly worded memo dated Oct. 24, 2007.
The department of foreign affairs’ handling of Afghanistan had been “timid, inadequate and ineffectual,” Colvin wrote, saying he was “deeply disappointed in our failure to live up to the rhetoric.”
The partly redacted five-page memo is among documents released to the military police complaints commission studying the treatment of Afghan detainees but not to the parliamentary committee on the Afghan mission. Copies of the memo were distributed by NDP MP Paul Dewar, who described it as “a smoking gun.”
“He’s very clear about the fact that Canada has not done enough to respond to the concerns around detainee transfer. ... He lays out what many of us have been concerned about (which) is that Mr. Colvin was calling out for someone to do something and his calls went unanswered,” Dewar said.
Meanwhile, Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh and Bloc Quebecois MP Claude Bachand called on government and military officials who can shed light on the handling of detainees to come forward. Dosanjh said he has already been approached by former military officers who suggested the military knew detainees being transferred to Afghan authorities were being mistreated.
elizabeth.thompson@sunmedia.ca
