 Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Minister of Defence Peter MacKay. (Chris Roussakis/QMI Agency)
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After years of accusations that the government turned a blind eye to torture and abuse of Taliban prisoners and other detainees transferred from Canadian to Afghan authorities between 2005 and 2007, the issue appears to have fizzled.
Late Wednesday afternoon, the federal government released more than 4,200 pages of documents relating to the prisoner transfers, and the Conservatives say the documents clear them and the Canadian Forces of any wrongdoing.
Even Liberal MP Stephane Dion, who pored over tens of thousands of documents as part of a secret ad hoc committee, agrees the documents show the Canadian Forces always acted with integrity and professionalism.
But he added the government moved too slowly to monitor and track the transferred prisoners to ensure they weren't abused at a later date by Afghan authorities, something he said was "likely."
Ambassador David Mulroney, former chief of the Afghanistan Task Force at the Privy Council Office, admitted that it took years for Canada to improve upon the detainee transfer agreement put in place when the Liberals were in power.
"The process we've undertaken has been one that has evolved as we've learned more," said Mulroney. "We established the first arrangement in December 2005 that we thought then correctly placed accountability in Afghan hands, but with the provision for visits and monitoring by both the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Independent Committee of the Red Cross. We constantly reviewed that. We tried to upgrade it."
Mulroney added it wasn't until 2007 that Canada finally sent over enough civilian personnel to effectively monitor how Afghan authorities were treating detainees.
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said the documents clear the government, and earlier accusations the government was complicit in war crimes "unfounded" and "simply not true.
"The documents reinforce what our government has said all along: we are and always have been committed to handling and transferring Taliban detainees in accordance with our international obligations," Baird said.
A secretive ad hoc all-party parliamentary committee had been poring over the documents for the past year, following an historic ruling by former Speaker Peter Milliken.
The committee decided by consensus which documents related to the transfer of Taliban prisoners and other detainees, and a panel of retired Supreme Court Judges were charged with determining which information or documents should stay censored to protect national security.
In the early stages of the war, Canada transferred its prisoners and detainees to the U.S. military, but signed a new agreement with Afghan authorities in late 2005, just before starting the combat mission in Kandahar.
The federal government suspended prisoner transfers in 2007 following allegations of torture and after tools of torture were found in Sarpoza prison in Kandahar.
But accusations ramped up in 2009 that the Canadian Forces and the government knew all along that the prisoners and detainees they were handing over were being abused, and did nothing about it, which if true would contravene the Geneva Convention and constitute a war crime.
The documents released Wednesday detail Canadian officials' visits with Taliban prisoners who routinely complained of insufficient food and lack of legal assistance while in Afghan custody.
However, allegations of torture or mistreatment were usually hearsay.
Baird also said the ad hoc committee, which cost Canadians $12 million, won't be re-struck, meaning they will not continue to look at sensitive documents related to the war in Afghanistan.
"I suspect if we went on for 12 years and spent $120 million that some would say that wasn't enough," he said.
Last year, the government released thousands of censored documents in response to demands from the opposition to see the files.
But Milliken ruled the government had breached the privilege of Parliament by denying MPs access to the uncensored documents.
He gave the government time to comply, which they did last spring by striking the all-party Afghan detainee documents committee to first vet the documents and withhold, by consensus, information that could jeopardize national security or endanger Canadian Forces members in Afghanistan.
The NDP, though, boycotted the committee and is still calling instead for a judicial public inquiry into whether Canadian Forces members and the government knowingly handed over detainees to abuse and torture at the hands of Afghan security forces.
New Democrat defence critic Jack Harris blasted the government's claim Wednesday that they have been cleared of wrongdoing, calling the process a "farce" and cautioned no conclusions can be drawn from the released documents.
He said the documents are still heavily censored and represent only a fraction of the 40,000 documents parliamentarians asked to see originally.
