Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Colvin, you had mentioned or had said that you had no problem accessing the prisoners or gaining access to the prison to speak to the prisoners. When I look at the transfer of detainees agreement, the one that was dated May 2007, it states:
Representatives of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission...and Canadian Government personnel, including representatives of the Canadian Embassy in Kabul and others empowered to represent the Government of Canada will have full and unrestricted access to any persons transferred by the Canadian Forces to Afghan authorities while such persons are in custody. In addition to the International Committee of the Red Cross...relevant human rights institutions with the UN system will be allowed access to visit such persons.
That's very plain, as to having ready access by many groups and organizations to the prisoners. I find it incredulous, too, with all of those facilities having access to the prisoners, that some information hasn't come through in the reporting.
When I look at your comments here, in your reports you've been sending in, it talks of risk of torture or actual torture. But here we've just had the discussion that what it might possibly be.... As you say, it might not have been torture; it might have been other forms of injury. The suggestion was that we don't know whether they were in solitary confinement or in individual cells. If they're in the population as a whole, certainly there are hazards to that, too, from other prisoners.
All the way through in here you talk about first-hand reports of torture. Yet through the discussion here, it's really like second-hand or third-hand reports of torture. You have said yourself that you haven't specifically seen anybody being tortured, but you see the marks or signs that you believe might be torture. But then again they might not.
With all of these differences of opinion on here, I still have to go back to the basis that I find it difficult to understand why you are the only person who can see through all of this and no other organization has come down with like comments.