Richard Colvin

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.

The documents tabled last week can be viewed in their entirety here. Herein, a series of posts on some of the noteworthy files and disclosures contained therein.

Would a Taliban prisoner by any other name seem just as evil?

We’ve posted the trove of Afghan detainee documents online

Amrullah Saleh was head of Afghanistan’s secret police, the NDS, during the time that Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin alleges detainees transferred to the NDS by Canadian Forces were tortured.

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.

The Conservatives’ critics inside the government have a remarkably short shelf life

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.

From Question Period this afternoon, the definitive moment of this particular moment in our collective history.

The latest, and perhaps last, meeting of all parties to negotiate a release of Afghan detainee documents will be this afternoon at 4:15pm. The Bloc and NDP indicated last week that this would likely be their last day before returning to the House. Over the weekend, while trying to sound as unthreatening as possible, Michael Ignatieff put an onus on today’s meeting.

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.