Military Police Complaints Commission

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.”

A government appeal to limit the scope of an investigation by the Military Police Complaints Commission has been rejected.

When Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird turned up at the podium yesterday afternoon, he announced as follows.

The Harper government is once more seeking to limit the purview of the Military Police Complaints Commission.

Murray Brewster covers the last day of hearings at the Military Police Complaints Commission.

A Conservative spokesman deftly reduces Peter Tinsley’s biography to 13 words.

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.

Detainee transfers were halted in May 2009 after an Afghan intelligence officer bragged of torture. Two allegations of mistreatment from later that year have now come to light.

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.

All parties are scheduled to return to the table to resume negotiations on Afghan detainee documents at 3:30pm this afternoon.

Sebastien Jodoin, a law fellow at Amnesty International who is participating in the Military Police Complaints Commission proceedings, sent along some unsolicited thoughts on the BOI report late last week. When I asked if I might post those thoughts here, he sent along more thoughts.

A former diplomat told the Afghanistan committee this week that the first officials heard of specific allegations of torture was when the Globe and Mail reported as much in April 2007.