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Macleans.ca

Canada’s magazine

Afghan detainees: The final report of the MPCC

The Military Police Complaints Commission has released its final report on the inquiry brought after Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association “alleged a failure on the part of certain Military Police (MP) to investigate the Canadian Task Force Commanders in Afghanistan for directing the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities in the face of a known risk of torture.”

The paper trail

While the Military Police Complaints Commission continues to go over what was known, what was believed and what could be proven about the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, the NDP has released a memo drafted by Richard Colvin in June 2007—apparently obtained through an access to information request—that details three allegations of abuse.

‘It was my No. 1 priority, but my bosses had other priorities, too’

As the Military Police Complaints Commission hearings continue, perhaps as many questions are raised as are answered.
Former diplomat Nicholas Gosselin visited Afghan detention facilities at least 38 times, but conducted only a handful of interviews with prisoners in the months after a bombshell allegation that a Canadian-captured detainee had been beaten with electrical cables. The revelation stunned both the inquiry chair and the human-rights group that prompted the continuing torture inquiry.

Gosselin told a Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry Tuesday that there often wasn’t time to get in to a question-and-answer session with inmates of either the Afghan intelligence jail, or the notorious Sarpoza prison.