Canadian Military Has Quit Turning Detainees Over to Afghans ('Beaten With Wires')

[Hissyspit]

Source: New York Times

Canadian Military Has Quit Turning Detainees Over to Afghans

By IAN AUSTEN
Published: January 24, 2008
OTTAWA — The Canadian military secretly stopped transferring prisoners to Afghanistan’s government in November after Canadian monitors found evidence that they were being abused and tortured. The government’s internal concerns about detainees is also at odds with Canadian officials’ repeated public statements that the Afghan government does not engage in systematic torture.

“The denials and political posturing and name-calling that have gone on over this at various points is very disheartening when all along there’s been this information,” said Alex Neve, the head of Amnesty International’s Canadian branch.

- snip -

“The government’s recognition that the transfers have ceased raises more questions than it answers,” Mr. Gretl said from Vancouver, British Columbia. He said the Canadian forces “may have transferred them to some third country, and we don’t know under what conditions the Canadian government would resume transfers.”

- snip -

The reports show that the monitors found that several detainees had been beaten and threatened during Afghan interrogations. In one report, the monitors said one prisoner told them he had been beaten with cables and wires and received electrical shocks. “He showed us a number of scars on his legs which he said were caused by the beating,” they wrote. Another detainee, who said he was beaten and who had signs of injury, told the diplomatic visitors to look under a chair in the room in which they were meeting. “Under the chair we found a large piece of braided electrical cable as well as a rubber hose,” the report said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/world/americas/24canada.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[JBoy]

1. Another disconnect between what the Canadian government "knows" and "says"

Unofficially, they know that both the Afghan and US governments use torture. Publicly, our Conservative talking heads say the opposite.

They may have successfully weasel-worded the Afghan position, though: "the Afghan government does not engage in systematic torture".

[gratuitous]

2. Well, that's just great

You know that now the U.S. is going to have to turn more detainees over to our Afghan friends and allies, to make up for the Canadian shortfall. You know how cranky the torturers can get when deprived of fresh bodies.

[Fiendish Thingy]

3. Good for the Canadians...

at least someone on the battlefield has some integrity to refuse to participate in war crimes.