Sarpoza

UPDATE: Lord, it gets worse by the minute. From the Guardian’s narrative of the bust-out, one Taliban escapee had this to say:

Suspicions were immediately roused that the escape plot must have enjoyed support and help from prison guards to suceed, but the Taliban escaper doubted it. “They were just sleeping,” he said amidst extended laughter.

“The guards are always drunk. Either they smoke heroin or marijuana, and then they just fall asleep. During the whole process no one checked, there was no patrols, no shooting or anything.”

…

As many as five hundred Taliban prisoners were busted out of Kandahar’s Sarpoza prison yesterday. The circumstances are quite remarkable: Insurgents spent 50 months digging a 300-metre tunnel from a safe house northeast of the prison. Prison staff only realized what had happened a half hour after the prisoners had escaped.

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.

A collection of documents, testimony and news reports related to Richard Colvin and Canada’s handling of Afghan detainees. The Colvin encyclopedia is updated as events warrant.

A former Afghan prison warden talks to Canwest.

Canwest talks to the current warden of Sarpoza prison in Afghanistan.

“The reality is, as I just said, there was a very serious security incident, the Sarpoza prison. We are all aware of that. What that should remind everybody in the chamber of is how dangerous some of the prisoners in that prison indeed are, indeed the danger of the Taliban that the local population and our Canadian Forces have to deal with every day. This should bring that appreciation to every member of the House and we should support Canadian troops.”