geneva conventions

A few weeks after NDP MP Don Davies suggested Dick Cheney should be barred from entering Canada, Amnesty International says Canadian authorities should arrest George W. Bush when he visits next week. It’s not clear that we have the power to do so. Jason Kenney is unimpressed.

Speaking at this weekend’s Conservative convention, Jason Kenney explains the Conservative ethos.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has hired Howard Anglin as his chief of staff.

What’s at stake here is nothing less than our system of government

Yesterday’s House debate on an Afghanistan inquiry begins here, with contributions from Paul Dewar, Peter MacKay, Ujjal Dosanjh, Bob Rae, Jack Harris and Lawrence Cannon, among others. After turning to other business, the House resumed debate here. One argument of note: Peter MacKay would seem to agree with Gen. Michel Gauthier’s contention that the situation somehow falls outside the Geneva Conventions.

A not disinterested observer passed on this QP exchange, from Feb. 6, 2002, yesterday.

The interesting question of how the Geneva Conventions apply to detainees taken by Canadian troops in Kandahar and then handed over to Afghan authorities is the subject of this post by colleague Wherry.

On May 31, 2006, two days before the Canadian Press reported an estimate that 30 percent of transferred detainees were tortured, the Globe published a story from Washington after an interview with Gen. Michel Gauthier. He explained, regarding the Geneva Conventions, that detainees are “are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status but they are entitled to prisoner-of-war treatment.” Gordon O’Connor, the defence minister at the time, seemed to split the same difference when asked in the House about Gen. Gauthier’s comments.

Further to this, it seems the Danish government is currently being sued by a former detainee who was seized by Danish forces and turned over to the Americans.

Sébastien Jodoin, a public interest law fellow with Amnesty International in Ottawa, sends along a response to these questions.

Richard Colvin testified that he and his colleagues in the field began informing Ottawa about the treatment of detainees in May 2006. He left Afghanistan in October 2007 and most of his testimony covered events in between.

Global gets a statement from National Defence.