freedetainees.org

Request for Expansion of Detainee Probe

by John McNamer

The Military Police Complaints Commission has been asked to expand its upcoming probe into the transfer of detainees by Canadian Forces to Afghan authorities despite evidence the detainees might be tortured.

His letter provided ’substantial’ evidence to demonstrate that prisoners in U.S. custody have been and continue to be subjected to the possibility of torture and death.

Kamloops, B.C. - McNamer said that Canada has violated Geneva Conventions with past transfers to the U.S. and that there is cause to believe detainees may still be ending up in U.S. hands directly or indirectly through Afghan authorities.

McNamer, who earned a Bronze Star Medal while serving with the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam, told MPCC Chair Peter Tinsley that he has documented and conveyed his concerns to the Prime Minister and other government officials, including the past Liberal government, for almost three years, but that his concerns have been ’stonewalled.’

Honourable Peter Tinsley
Chair Military Police Complaints Commission
270 Albert Street, 10th Floor
Ottawa,  ON,  K1P 5G8

Honourable Mr. Tinsley:

I am a Vietnam veteran who was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for my service with the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division, and I have been actively following the handling of detainees by Canadian military personnel in Afghanistan for a number of years.  As a Canadian citizen, I must tell you I have been shocked and deeply troubled by the longstanding, well-documented failure of Canada to abide by Geneva Conventions and related domestic law with respect to the handling of detainees.

The MPCC is to be commended for undertaking the upcoming public hearings into the transfer of detainees by Canadian authorities to Afghan authorities despite evidence the detainees might be tortured.  Such an inquiry is long overdue.

However, I have reason to believe that the announced focus of the hearings is but the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and that Canada has also violated and may still be violating Geneva Conventions against torture by handing over Afghan detainees to U.S. authorities — either directly or indirectly through Afghan authorities — despite substantial documented evidence the detainees might be tortured and possibly even killed while in U.S. custody.

I therefore hereby wish to formally request that the Military Police Complaints Commission expand the scope of public hearings to look into the transfer of all Afghan detainees by Canadian Forces to all other authorities.  These questions must be asked:  ‘How many people have Canadian Forces in Afghanistan turned over to their possible torture and possible death at the hands of U.S. authorities?’ and ‘Is anyone in Canadian Forces even keeping track of possible torture and death of such detainees at the hands of U.S. authorities, as required by Geneva Conventions?’

Canada for years turned detainees over to the U.S., the detaining authority in Afghanistan prior to the 2005 agreement for Canada to begin turning the detainees over to Afghan authorities.  I would draw your attention to the reported torture and many other illegal abuses prior to 2005 by U.S. coalition forces, as documented in the March 11, 2005, Report of the Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan to the UN Commission on Human Rights.  Quoting from this report:

• “Documented reports of serious violations…include:  …arrest and detention of nationals and foreigners without legal authority or judicial review — sometimes for extended periods of time; forced nudity; hooding and sensory deprivation; sleep and food deprivation; forced squatting and standing for long periods of time in stress conditions; sexual abuse; beatings; torture, and use of force resulting in death. There are at least 8 cases of prisoners who have died while in United States custody in Afghanistan.”

Dr. Michael Byers, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, examined the issue in a March 2006 Toronto Star article titled Why Canada can’t wash its hands of Afghan detainees:

• “For four years, Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan have violated international law by transferring suspected Taliban and al Queda fighters into the custody of the United States.”

He also noted that under international law, Canada’s obligations do not end when a detainee leaves its soldiers’ hands and that if any detainee who was captured by Canada ends up being tortured, Canada will be complicit.

I have been unable to ascertain whether detainees transferred to Afghan authorities are now being turned over to the U.S. — despite a prolonged and, as it turns out, rather pointless correspondence with Department of National Defence officials — but there appears to be nothing in the 2005 arrangement between Canada and Afghanistan to prevent the turnover of prisoners to the U.S.

Knowledgeable sources say it is unrealistic to assume some won’t find their way into U.S. custody.

• “We are kidding ourselves if we think someone important won’t be in the front door and out the back,” said a source directly involved with framing the agreement, who added “They wouldn’t hold Osama bin Laden very long.”  (Toronto Star, Mar. 4, 2006, “Martin inked pact on detainees”)

Concern about the fate of detainees turned over to the U.S. by Canada is further warranted by admissions in 2006 by U.S. President George W. Bush that individuals accused of terrorism have been detained abroad in secret CIA prisons.  Media reports in 2005 said the U.S. spy agency had been running a covert prison system for four years in at least eight countries, including Afghanistan.  Bush defended the covert system, (which many consider a violation of international law) and also acknowledged that the CIA employed “alternative” procedures to extract information from the suspects, (”Bush acknowledges secret CIA

prisons for terror suspects,” CBC news, Sep. 6, 2006).

And in February 2008 it was confirmed in U.S. congressional testimony that waterboarding is one of the “alternative” procedures that was used — and continues to be available for use by U.S. agents.  Waterboarding involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.  It has been traced back hundreds of years to the Spanish Inquisition and is condemned by nations around the world.

The Bush Administration has refused to rule on whether waterboarding is torture.  According to recent congressional testimony by CIA Director Michael Hayden, waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods available to the CIA with approval on a case-by-case basis by the attorney general and the president of the United States (”Karzai controls a third of Afghanistan,” by Pamela Hess (AP), FindLaw.com, Feb. 27, 2008.)

But perhaps the most compelling evidence of longstanding widespread systematic torture of detainees by U.S. personnel surfaced just recently in a New York Times article July 2, 2008, titled “China Inspired Interrogations at Guantanamo.”  It indicates that U.S. military and CIA interrogators have been using techniques:

• “copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.”   The story goes on to say that “the recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

This was confirmed in a Washington Post article September 5, 2008, titled “Top Officials Knew in 2002 of Harsh Interrogations”, which says top White House officials including the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and Attorney General all were given details in 2002 of this:

• “obscure Army survival training program…known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) that…was the inspiration for several of the interrogation methods later used at both CIA and Defense Department detention camps.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin:

• “noted that the SERE methods themselves — which include not only waterboarding but also exposure to temperature extremes, forced nudity and sensory deprivation — were designed by Chinese communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen.”

Given that Canada is a trusted ally of the United States and a member of the U.S. coalition that invaded and occupies Afghanistan, is it not logical to believe that top Canadian officials and military leaders must have had, or should have had, knowledge of such reprehensible and illegal activities at the time detainees were being handed over to the U.S.?

An example of how these policies worked on the ground in Afghanistan is shown in an excerpt from Amnesty International’s Preliminary Briefing to the UN Committee Against Torture (AI Index: AMR 51/061/2006):

I wonder:  Was Mr. Dilwar one of the detainees turned over to U.S. authorities by Canadian Forces?

Of possible interest to the MPCC is a legal opinion issued just this week by the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition looking at the liability of the UK in handing over individuals in British custody in Iraq to the U.S. if there is a risk of torture.  The opinion states that a human rights violation would occur under both the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act 1998 where “an individual in British detention in Iraq is handed over to US military personnel despite substantial grounds for considering that there is a real risk of that person being subjected to torture or inhuman and degrading treatment.”

The opinion also determined that US assurances that suspects handed over by the UK would not be tortured would not be sufficient to absolve the UK of its legal obligations.

I have personally documented and conveyed the above concerns - and more - to the  current Conservative Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Attorney General; to the previous Liberal government, and to the Governor General and others for almost three years and have been completely stonewalled except for a few form letters offering vague philosophical patriotic rhetoric.  It seems there is just no interest on the part of elected officials or the Commander-in-Chief of Canada in addressing questions concerning whether or not Canada is meeting its legal obligations under terms of the Geneva Conventions. As I’m sure you know, Canada is fully obligated to obey all aspects of the Conventions.  How sad for Canada, and for Canadians.

Please let me know if I can be of assistance in providing further information and documentation about Canadian Forces’ possible violation of international and domestic law by handing Afghan detainees over to U.S. authorities despite evidence detainees might be tortured.

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