Afghanistan Committee on Nov. 26th, 2009

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm just talking generally. You could write a report describing events that were either second-hand, from the person alleging it, or someone who was observing, right? We heard of one case where there was evidence of a cable and a rubber hose under a chair—

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

That was the case we identified through our monitoring and that led us to stop transferring detainees until we had conducted a thorough investigation over many months.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Right.

Was the word “torture” ever written in that document?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

I'd have to go back to look at that document.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

If you could provide that to us, that would be good.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

What it was based on, though, Mr. Dewar, is that we developed, with Correctional Service, DFAIT, and the military, a template that allowed us to conduct rigorous and extensive questioning of Canadian-transferred detainees. These people were trained in torture awareness. They reported exactly and faithfully in terms of what—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm not questioning that. I'm questioning the word “torture” being in a document, that you could easily have a document written that describes torture with the word “torture” never appearing.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

What the document was designed to do was not to offer impressions but to report on facts.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

That's fair. We're good on that.

Before 2007 and amending the detainee agreement that you mentioned, did you ever brief the Prime Minister—I'm assuming you would have—on detainees?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

In 2007 I was—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Before the amendment of the agreement of 2005.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

In 2007 I was working in DFAIT and I would have briefed Minister MacKay.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

And during the period before the 2005 detainee transfer agreement was amended, which was in 2007—

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

Correct.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

—did you ever brief the Prime Minister on the detainee issue?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

I briefed up through Minister MacKay. I was in DFAIT, as associate deputy minister.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay.

One of the documents I was able to get through the access to information process was from March 8, 2007, in which you were asked by PCO, Jill Sinclair:

...putting together a list of questions and issues that we want to address in our note to the pm today. Intention is to forward to you in advance of your meeting in order to help get all the issues on the table at noon.

There are a lot of things blacked out. The subject line is “RE: Detainees”. It's an e-mail exchange. I'm not sure if you might have seen that.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

I worked very closely with PCO in those days, as part of the interdepartmental community.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

That day, March 7, was the same date the Red Cross was publicly saying that the government was misstating the Red Cross role, so it is likely that you were briefing the PCO on the issue of detainees. Is that probably what that was about?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

PCO was part of almost all of our interdepartmental meetings on that subject.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So you would have been briefing about the Red Cross and what you understood to be the role of.... I mean, at that time we know Minister O'Connor had been under a lot of heat about what the arrangement was, and he misinformed the House that the Red Cross was informing the Government of Canada on what was happening to detainees. Do you recall that?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

I can recall that, but I don't recall what this particular.... We were talking to PCO on a daily basis on every aspect of the detainee issue.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay.

Do you remember concerns—and I asked one of the witnesses yesterday—about Governor Khalid? Were you aware of allegations regarding torture that Mr. Khalid was involved with? There were allegations about him having a dungeon. There were allegations of him involved in abuse: physical and otherwise. Were you aware of those allegations?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

I was aware of those allegations. Those were fairly widespread in Afghanistan, and they were widespread about a lot of very senior people who had come out of 20 or 30 years of chaos.

With respect to those allegations, let me say a couple of things. We asked the PRT and others to investigate. People went to the governor's mansion and they in fact looked inside the governor's mansion. Despite those allegations, we could not find any evidence that we could bring to the Afghan government.

What was important, though, was that we were pushing very hard to ensure our relationship with the governor was based on expectations we expected him to meet in terms of his obligations to the Government of Afghanistan, its constitution, and international law.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Did you have access to his facility?