Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian War Crimes in Afghanistan

A lengthy, well-documented and detailed piece by Michael Keefer, professor at the University of Guelph, Ontario, on the complicity of Harper and his minions in Afghan detainee transfer to certain torture, deliberate blocking of information at the highest levels in the Canadian Forces and the Canadian government and outright lies from Harper's government when questioned by news and parliamentary committees about it.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian War Crimes in Afghanistan

"...[A]ccording to law professor Amir Attaran, who has seen uncensored versions of the documents that the Harper government has so strenuously resisted sharing with Parliament, the paper trail is thoroughly incriminating. In March 2010 Attiran told CBC News: “If these documents were released [in full], what they will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees […]. There would be a question of rendition and a question of war crimes on the part of certain Canadian officials. That’s what’s in these documents, and that’s why the government is covering up as hard as it can.”

This question hasn't even come up in this election campaign except by Jack Layton of the New Democratic Party (NDP) whose position all along has been against the war and Canada's part in it. For his efforts, his was given the name "Taliban Jack" by Harper Conservatives and their supporters.

Michael Keefer's conclusion:

"The clear pattern of intentionality revealed in the words and actions of senior Canadian government bureaucrats and senior military officers is both embarrassing (these people actually believe, despite copious evidence to the contrary, that torture produces real ‘intelligence’) and also a scandalous offence against the rule of law.

More scandalous still is the evidence that these people were acting on directives from Stephen Harper—that Harper knew perfectly well that the Afghan puppet-state tortures the prisoners handed over to it by the Canadian Forces, but nonetheless permitted the continuation of this system, and that he actually took charge of the program of lying about it. "

Torture? Mais non, we know nothing about it (part deux).

Sounds like a plan to me, but I don't think they meant it that way.

A top military commander says in a sworn affidavit Canadian troops would have to quit fighting the Taliban if they could not hand prisoners over to Afghan authorities.

Maybe they shouldn't have been so gung-ho to charge in there, then.

..Although Canada is waging its biggest war effort in more than half a century, the 2,500-soldier commitment to Afghanistan has only a limited capacity to hold prisoners temporarily. That is by design. "The Canadian Forces has no capacity or ability to hold detainees other than for transfer purposes," says Gen. Deschamps, an air force general who once commanded the Camp Mirage logistics base in the Gulf.

Doing the right thing, only after they've been found out, as usual.

..Despite intensive follow-up inspections, arranged by the Harper government only after The Globe and Mail published harrowing detainee accounts of torture and abuse in Afghan prisons, a significant number of transferred prisoners still say that they have been tortured after transfer.

This whole thing makes me sick.

Are you afraid yet?

Not only does Canada hold secret trials, in which neither the accused nor their lawyers know what the charges are, but now even the fact that hearings are being held is a secret - for "security reasons". Where have I heard that before? Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez?

I never thought that Amnesty International would have to question the legal system in Canada. What wonders the (neo)Conservative Harperite government have visited on this country in their effort to please the almighty U.S.

A new chapter in the legal drama involving suspected abuse of Afghan detainees has been playing out away from the public eye under strict, court-imposed secrecy, The Canadian Press has learned.

Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association applied on July 11 for an order to force the federal government to release as many as 140 pages of documents related to the handling of prisoners suspected of being Taliban.

...[L]aws allowing the state to keep documents secret are not new, said Amnesty International lawyer Paul Champ.

"Unfortunately, the Canada Evidence Act has some very peculiar provisions that were enacted after 9/11 that prohibited us from even telling anyone that we were challenging them," he said in an interview.

"They are very strange provisions that don't allow anyone to disclose the existence of a [court] application. The court registry is not allowed to disclose it. The registry has to keep our files segregated from the other court files and not tell anyone about them."

Holding hearings in secret is an affront to the justice system and to anyone who believes in the rule of law, Mr. Champ said.

"I think it would offend any Canadian, this whole idea that they can't even know about the existence of a court action."

...[M]r. Champ had asked for documents from National Defence and Foreign Affairs after officials from both departments testified in the first round of court action.

"It's unfair for the government to say there's no risk of torture without them being required to produce the documents they have," he said.

"We think they do have documents that do demonstrate they know there's a risk of torture or that, in fact, torture is going on in Afghan custody. And they're hiding behind the Evidence Act to refuse to disclose those documents."

When The Globe and Mail reported in April that detainees said they had been abused, the Conservative government insisted it was not aware of any suspected cases of prisoner mistreatment.