Afghanistan Committee on Nov. 26th, 2009

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

In the AIHRC study he referred to? I believe so.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

We know that the Taliban uses that as a tactic for information operations, that whenever they get captured they do claim torture, regardless. It's in their manual.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

That is an insurgent tactic.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I have to challenge another throw-away line that Mr. Dosanjh threw out, talking about you briefing Minister MacKay and also the Prime Minister, and he walked away from it.

Is that in fact the case, that every time you briefed Minister MacKay, you briefed the Prime Minister?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

No.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Mr. Chair, I can see the opposition is fishing for something to find there, to throw things at us. It's quite evident from his question. Let's go back to the real thing.

You liaised with all the other NATO members on this. Can you say how our system was in keeping an eye on the detainees compared to the other NATO members?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

There were comments, at the time that we briefed NATO on our new arrangement, that we had set a standard that would be hard for others to keep. We based that on what we knew of the pace of their visits. We knew that even those with detainee-monitoring systems in the south were visiting every six weeks, every couple of months.

When I look back at our pace now, it was approximately every five days. We were in those prisons an awful lot. We also combine it with training, capacity building, with the diplomatic strategy that I talked about, with physical infrastructure improvements, including improvements that I have seen at Sarposa prison.

I think our approach represents a best practice for NATO in Afghanistan.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Mulroney. I hope the opposition will take that into account.

I will give my time to my friend.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Mulroney, I'll start with the general state of the conditions of the war that all of this is taking place in--the most unusual thing since the Korean War, and so on. What we didn't necessarily hear is what it actually meant to the non-military, those of you who had to work in those conditions. Can you explain what that did to your decision-making and the process you had to work in, please?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

It was a major concern for me, because the prison visits were and remain extremely dangerous. It takes a high degree of training, and there is a significant degree of risk in deploying people through the streets of Kandahar and into prisons that just about anywhere can be dangerous places, but in Afghanistan are particularly dangerous, as we saw with the Sarposa incident.

We spent a lot of time on training. We spent a lot of time working out visit protocols with the Canadian Forces so that we could do it safely, and safely for the forces as well, because they have to stand out there in the prison yard when these visits are taking place. We worked up a whole series of protocols so that we could ensure that each department was comfortable, and that we had the capacity to get out there into the prisons on a regular basis.

It took an awful lot of work, but I have nothing but admiration for the people who do it. We have some very superior people conducting that force.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

Mr. Dewar.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Mulroney, when we talk about the transfer of detainees in the period Mr. Colvin was reporting on, he sent about six reports. He gave evidence to this committee that he was letting people know there were problems.

Now you say there were problems. He says there were problems. When we look at what the problems were--you used the word “problem” many times--can we not say that part of the problem was that there was widespread abuse in all of the jails across Afghanistan, including Kandahar? Was that not one of the problems?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

The problem was that there was abuse reported in various institutions in Afghanistan. That possibility existed.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Including the jails.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

Yes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

We've got that, so we agree on that. Mr. Colvin agrees. You agree.

I think you pointed out very well the problems with the process. We were handing over detainees and couldn't monitor them up until the new agreement. Is that true?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

We had visited prisons, but we didn't have a monitoring regime in place.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Exactly. So we had no idea where they were going.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

We had commitments in place from the Government of Afghanistan, and we had situations where the AIHRC and the ICRC went into the prisons.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Right, but they got in touch with us to say it wasn't a sufficient process, which is why we had to change it.

So I don't understand why there is this notion that everything was fine, when everyone agrees there were problems. We say it was torture. We say that when you hit people with cables and use electric shock, that is torture. When you have problems like that you have to rectify them.

On what I have a problem with, if you're handing people over and you have no idea where they're going, how can you say they weren't being tortured? How can we sit here and say that from the period when Mr. Colvin was reporting and when they were being handed over.... Can you be 100% sure with absolute clarity that none of them were being tortured? Can you say that?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

We established the new arrangement so we could speak with that degree of confidence.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

But we can't say that prior to the arrangement.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

We established the arrangement and everything that went with it--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm asking a different question. You can't say with 100% assurance that the detainees that were handed over during that period weren't tortured.