In 2005 General Rick Hillier, then chief of the Canadian defence staff, was quoted as saying that Canadian forces would be ruthless in pursuing terrorists in Afghanistan. “These are detestable murderers and scumbags, I’ll tell you that right up front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties,” he said, parroting the Bush administration’s propaganda about the motives behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

How ruthless would Canadian forces be? Recent revelations by Canadian diplomats, Canadian Forces translators and by rank and file soldiers have revealed that Canada’s armed forces handed prisoners over to the Afghan authorities in the full knowledge that they would be tortured and, in some instances, murdered. And as we will see, despite his denials, Hillier knew full well that prisoners handed over by Canadian forces were likely to be tortured or murdered by Canada’s Afghan allies. And as we will also see, it was not only Hillier that knew. Canada’s U.S. and British allies knew, Canadian diplomats knew, and the government of Canada knew.

Speaking Truth To Power

Prominent Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin sparked a political firestorm in November 2009 when he told a House of Commons committee that all detainees transferred to Afghan prisons by Canadian soldiers were likely tortured by Afghan officials. Colvin testified that Canadian detainees were routinely tortured by the Afghans and that Canadian government officials and military personnel transferred detainees to Afghan authorities despite widespread reports of torture.

Colvin testified that he heard allegations of prisoner mistreatment within a month of his arrival in Afghanistan in 2006 and stated that he and his colleagues soon learned the “pattern of risk facing our detainees.”

Colvin revealed that he reported International Red Cross concerns about Canada’s handling of detainees to the government in a June 2006 e-mail along with warnings about the torture of detainees in Afghan jails. Colvin said he had difficulty finding anyone in the Canadian Forces to take his calls regarding the ‘high risk’ of mistreatment of detainees at the hands of Afghan forces. He said Major Erik Liebert, his colleague on the Provincial Reconstruction Team, told him that “no one wants to touch this hot potato.”

According to the Canadian Forces, detainees were either Taliban or suspected Taliban. However, according to Colvin, this was not the case with regards to many of the detainees who were randomly gathered up in sweeps by the Canadians. Colvin told the special House of Commons committee on Afghanistan that arbitrary arrests of locals have made Afghanis fear Canadians.

“Many were just local people: farmers, truck drivers, tailors, and peasants – random human beings in the wrong place at the wrong time, young men in their fields and villages, who were completely innocent but who were nevertheless rounded up. In other words, we retained and handed over for severe torture a lot of innocent people,” Colvin testified on November 18, 2009. “They were picked up...during routine military operations, and on the basis typically not of intelligence [reports] but suspicion or unproven denunciation.”

The Canadian Forces followed a cumbersome six-step method of informing the International Red Cross each time a detainee was transferred into Afghan custody. Colvin testified that the six-step process took “days, weeks, or, in some cases, up to two months,” during which time the Forces did not monitor what happened to the prisoners. Colvin also stated that Canadian authorities also kept poor records, making it almost impossible for the International Red Cross to trace transferred prisoners.

Colvin testified that he flew to Ottawa for an inter-agency meeting in March 2007 with a dozen or so government officials. When he realized his warnings about allegations of abuse surrounding the dreaded Afghan secret police, the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) were not reaching his superiors, he dropped his normally cautious and diplomatic language in favour of speaking bluntly. The NDS “tortures people, that are what they do,” he recalled saying at the meeting. “And if we don’t want our detainees tortured, we shouldn’t give them to the NDS.” Colvin said that statement was met with silence and the note-taker at the meeting put down her pen.

The Canadian government has responded to Colvin’s testimony by branding it as a pack of lies and by attempting to smear Colvin himself. Yet Colvin is not the only one making allegations of Canadian forces complicity in torture. In April 2010 Ahmadshah Malgarai, a former translator with the Canadian Forces testified before Parliament and accused military intelligence of outsourcing torture to the Afghan National Directorate of Security.

“I saw Canadian military intelligence sending detainees to the NDS when the detainees did not tell them what they expected to hear,” Malgarai said. “If the interrogator thought a detainee was lying, the military sent him to the NDS for more questions, Afghan-style. Translation: abuse and torture.” Effectively, he said, “the military used the NDS as subcontractors for abuse and torture.”

The accusation that detainees handed over to Afghan forces were killed has also been made by a Canadian soldier with the Royal Canadian Regiment who served in the local Panjwai District. He took his concerns to a military doctor who was treating him for stress. A 2008 report on the soldiers’ claim states, “After they handed over the detainee, the local authority would walk the detainee out of range and the detainee would be shot. This occurred on more than one occasion.”

Paul Champ, counsel for Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, recently stated that his clients strongly believe “there still remains a serious and substantial risk of torture” for detainees in Canadian Forces custody who are handed over to Afghan authorities. Champ says that the threat exists despite a 2007 prisoner transfer agreement that provides for regular visits to Afghan jails. Champ has also testified that visits by Canadian diplomatic personnel to Afghan jails have been reduced to one visit per month and that Afghan authorities are notified prior to the visits. It is incomprehensible to believe that Canada continues to transfer detainees to Afghan authorities in light of the fact that Britain stopped the practice in June 2009 because of fears of prisoner torture, Champ said.

Allegations have been made in a British courtroom that Afghan detainees handed over by British troops to Afghan secret police were regularly beaten with weapons, hung from ceilings and electrocuted. The allegations were made by Maya Evans, an anti-war activist seeking a judicial review of Britain’s detainee transfer policy in Afghanistan. According to Daniel Carey, a human rights lawyer, “the court’s going to hear very compelling evidence that British forces for a number of years now have received evidence that detainees arrested by British forces, held in British facilities and therefore under control of the British government, have been transferred to the Afghan secret police and have alleged torture in Afghan facilities.”

What this case shows is that the British government was aware as early as 2004 of extra-judicial torture and murder committed by the NDS but chose to hand over captured prisoners anyway because NDS agents had “the best people skills” for wrestling information from detainees.

Carey further said that the case could bring to light a connection to allegations regarding Canadian officials’ knowledge of torture. “It stands to reason, does it not, that with Canada being in control in Kandahar province and the U.K. in Helmand province, and detainees being transferred between facilities in Afghanistan, as you would expect, that of course there’s knowledge shared...I’m sure the Canadian public will be interested in the evidence in this case.”

Implausible Denial

Under the Geneva Conventions, to which Canada is a signatory, handing over prisoners to be tortured constitutes a war crime. The Canadian government denies that it knew that prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities faced certain torture and worse at their hands. The government says that it has never received any credible allegations of torture of prisoners. Further, Lawrence Cannon, the Foreign Affairs minister, has said that all allegations have been investigated and all have turned out to be unfounded.

Hillier’s successor, General Walter Natynczyk, current chief of the Canadian defence staff, continues to state that, to his knowledge, except for one isolated case, there is no evidence that anyone transferred to Afghan authorities was mistreated. Yet current and previous reports from the U.S. State Department admit that torture remains commonplace in Afghan prisons. The Department’s 2009 report on human rights in Afghanistan states that torture happens on a regular basis. “Human rights organizations report local authorities tortured and abused detainees. Torture and abuse methods included...beating by stick, scorching bar or iron bar, flogging by cables, battering by rod, electric shock, deprivation of sleep, water and food, abusive language, sexual humiliation and rape.”

Stuart Hendin, an expert on human rights law based at the University of Ottawa, says that while the U.S. report is clear that torture is rampant in Afghan prisons, “it is difficult to comprehend why the U.S. State Department can make that finding and somehow our military leadership seems to take the position that there were no problems.”

In the fall of 2009 the Canadian House of Commons, responding to the allegations made by Colvin and the others, ordered the Canadian government to release classified documents that would reveal exactly what the government knew about detainee torture and when it knew it. At first, the government defied this order. In fact, when this demand was first made the government was so afraid of what might be revealed that it shut Parliament down for several weeks through an obscure parliamentary procedure known as prorogation.

However, the Speaker of the House, Peter Milliken, ruled that the government has to hand relevant documents over on the principle that the elected Parliament is supreme or be found in contempt of Parliament. Subject to having its ministers arrested, the government caved in and agreed to an all-party committee that would sift through the documents for relevant evidence. However, the New Democratic Party representative on this committee has quit, stating that the procedure to vet documents to which the other three parties on the committee have all agreed ensures that the government will be able to prevent the release of any documents about detainee torture under the rubric of protecting national security. Thus, it would appear that we will never learn the real truth about what the government knew – at least, not from this committee, anyway.

War Criminals R Us

As for Hillier, questions remain as to what extent his statements, actions and orders as chief of the Canadian defence staff encouraged Canadian soldiers to indiscriminately round up innocent Afghanis and hand them over to be tortured. What is clear is that his statement to the effect that Taliban forces were ‘detestable murderers and scumbags’ is a textbook example of the classic military technique of dehumanizing the enemy in order to make that enemy appear less than fully human, making it easier for one’s own forces to brutalize, torture and kill that enemy.

Up to this point Hillier has refused to answer any questions relating to the handing over of detainees for torture, beyond saying that none of the allegations that have been made are true. However, it has now been revealed that Hillier himself proposed a more diligent system of monitoring detainees early on in the Kandahar mission. In December of 2006 Hillier drafted what is known as a tasking order that instructed the army to “proactively engage Afghan authorities,” confirming that “acceptable detainee handling procedures and practices” were in place.

This document recognized that detainee abuse was likely occurring in Afghan jails and attempted to lay a foundation to deal with torture allegations. “This direction is issued despite the fact that allegations of mistreatment of such detainees have not been supported by specific facts and remain unsubstantiated,” according to the draft order.

We see then that Hillier was aware of detainee torture allegations right from the get-go and that he was concerned enough to propose implementing a procedure that would prevent detainees from being tortured. However, senior government officials put the tasking order on hold as they “considered a whole-of-government approach.” A few months later the Canadian government put in place a detainee monitoring regime with the Karzai government (referred to above), but only after allegations of torture and abuse had surfaced in the media.

As far as we know, Hillier did nothing during the interval to ensure that detainees were safe from torture, despite what he knew about its likelihood. And as far as we know, Hillier did nothing to prevent the torture of detainees from occurring once the monitoring regime was put in place, despite its obvious flaws and despite continuing allegations of detainee mistreatment and torture.

Hillier may be summoned to testify before the Parliamentary committee looking into detainee torture allegations. If and when the truth emerges about who knew what about detainee torture, it may come to light that Hillier did more than we know at this point to try to prevent detainee torture.

On the other hand, it may come to light that Hillier did nothing beyond the above. Yet whether or not he attempted to prevent the torture of detainees captured by Canadian forces and was over-ruled by the Canadian government, the fact remains that he was chief of the Canadian defence staff during a period when the intentional targeting of civilian targets by Canadian forces was standard practice. This, too, is a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions, and is one of the main reasons why the insurgency is as strong as it is today. It is also one of the main reasons why the U.S. led NATO forces appear at this point to have lost this war.

When the time comes to prosecute Canadians for complicity in war crimes in Afghanistan, Hillier’s name should be one of the first in the docket. Not that his is the only name that should be so entered. He is, after all, nothing more than a complicit cog in the Canadian war machine. Canadians are rightly outraged about a government and military that act like “despicable murderers and scumbags.”