Documents reveal federal officials worried about accuracy of Conservatives’ position on Afghan jail conditions
Secret documents reveal Canadian officials were concerned that the actual treatment of Afghan detainees did not match what the Conservatives said was happening in Kandahar jails. An adviser with the Afghanistan Task Force wrote a memo to former foreign affairs minister Lawrence Cannon in 2007 warning of the impending release of detainee documents. “[…]The assembled material may seem to suggest that Government of Canada messaging on the detainee issues for the last 12 months has been out of sync with reporting from the field,” the memo said. The documents are part of a 4,000-page release of Afghan detainee records. The documents had been released previously, but were heavily censored. Even though less information has been redacted, the papers still don’t offer many more clues as to whether government officials knew the Canadian military was passing on detainees to Afghan officials to be tortured.