Afghanistan Committee on Nov. 26th, 2009

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

We visited his residence. We didn't see any facility—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Not the so-called dungeon.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

We spoke to people at a very high level in Kabul to express our concerns about these allegations, but we were never able to find any specific item that we could point to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you, Mr. Mulroney.

That concludes the opening round of seven minutes. We'll get quickly into the second round, which will be five minutes each. We start with the government and then go over to the official opposition.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I will speak quickly and then pass off to Mr. Obhrai.

Mr. Mulroney, with respect to the meeting in March 2007 that Mr. Dewar alluded to, is it your understanding that it was about that time that the Red Cross was clarifying its role with respect to monitoring, and so on—

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

Correct.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

—and that the new arrangement was in the process of being amended at that point? Is that a fair statement?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

That is correct.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Mulroney. Once again it is nice to have you here to explain the situation in Afghanistan, which is, as you explained, quite complex.

I want to bring into this two aspects and go to what your expertise is about distribution lists in DFAIT.

One of the aspects of what we are talking about here is the transfer of detainees captured by Canadian soldiers, the responsibility of the Canadian soldiers in terms of these detainees going across, and your responsibility and the subsequent agreement with you and the department to monitor that they were not being tortured, and if they were, what action was being taken. That is the first one.

But what I am hearing now coming from the opposition side is all this bigger issue, that you were hearing coming from the field that there was general torture taking place in the prisons and everywhere else, which, as you rightly pointed out, didn't have the capacity.

If there was general torture, that was part of your responsibility to create the institutions, the human rights and everything else. But we must be very clear here in terms of what was the responsibility of the Canadian soldiers to the detainees. That is the question we should be discussing, and not, as the opposition is saying, folding it into the bigger umbrella of human rights abuses as a whole.

Many questions have arisen here, such as on the C4 messages that come in here, the massive distribution list. With you being in DFAIT, can you perhaps guide us? If a C4 message arrived in the department, what would be the process? Would it go to everyone, or how would it reach the top portion? How would the information in a C4 message be disseminated to address your task force?

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

Thank you, Mr. Obhrai.

First, our primary focus was to ensure that Canadian-transferred detainees did not face a substantial risk of torture. Every Canadian soldier is trained and is instructed in the responsibilities under the Geneva Convention. We work very closely with all parts of the Canadian Forces that were involved in capturing and transferring detainees.

DFAIT was responsible for providing the other piece of the process—that is, once the detainee is transferred, organizing with the Correctional Service and the RCMP the monitoring, the diplomatic engagement with the Afghan government if we have any concerns that those needs are not being met, and all the capacity-building and training. So it was a partnership and a continuum.

It wasn't unrelated to that larger issue of human rights, because a lot of our funding through CIDA and other mechanisms was going to improve the justice sector—to train judges, to train lawyers, to improve prisons, etc. So all those things were happening.

In terms of the distribution of C4 messages, generally the more important the message the higher it goes up in the system and the fewer people it goes to, because they are often more sensitive topics that are going to directors general, assistant deputy ministers, deputy ministers, or above.

Generally the message goes to either a person or an office. If it goes to an office, it is then the responsibility of the head of that office or the person who manages the C4 account to determine where it goes and how high up it goes. In other cases, a message might go to someone at one level and be passed on because of the importance that person attaches to it.

What we tried to do on our messages with the detainee issue was that we found, in the early stages of our work, some would go to seven people, and sometimes the message would go to 75 people. The more people the message goes to the more diffused is the accountability, so we said every organization has to identify one person who is primarily responsible for the detainee file in the organization. They are then responsible for ensuring that it goes to whoever else needs to see it.

I was always on that traffic and I made sure that I reported faithfully on anything I saw coming from the reporting. So we had to bring discipline and accountability to the distribution line.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

So if somebody from the field sent in a C4 and he had a distribution list of 70 or 80, once it arrived in the department it was narrowed down to a few very key individuals--that's what you've explained--so it would not mean that those who were listed as being on the C4 would get that--

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

No, it goes to your individual C4 account, so if it went to 78 people, 78 people would see it.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Would see it.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

To the official opposition, Mr. Dosanjh.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Mulroney, thank you for being here.

I'm going to put my questions on the table, and then my colleague has a question, so he'll put it on the table and then you can answer them.

Mr. Mulroney, I find your evidence rather interesting, in the sense that Mr. Colvin told us the people he interviewed in Kabul were people who had been transferred from Kandahar after being detained in Kandahar at the NDS for a while, and you said they couldn't be our detainees.

You can't be certain, sir. I want you to answer that: how can you be so certain?

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission 2008 report essentially says that out of the 400 or so detainees they interviewed, 98.5% were tortured or abused or mistreated. How can you be so sure our detainees only fit the 1.5% who were never tortured? I want you to answer that to our satisfaction.

The other thing you say, sir, and I want you to answer this, is that the situation was so bad.... You said you knew there was torture: we had some bad people on our hands, and we had to get rid of them, so while we made changes we simply then put them into the system because we couldn't keep them around; they were dangerous people.

That's almost, sir, pleading a defence of necessity when you send people to risk of torture.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

If that had been what I said.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

No, that's what you said.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

What I said was, and this is important, that there were problems in the Afghan system--

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Let him add the question.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

Okay, but that's an important assertion, and I have to address it right now.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

You should.

[His Excellency David Mulroney]

We never, ever transferred anyone if we thought there was a substantial risk of torture. We knew there were problems in the Afghan system, but we developed a robust monitoring system. We intervened with training. We had every means of addressing the system from the very top, the president--and we intervened with the president--through the ministers, the director of the NDS, and on down.

That we knew there were problems in Afghanistan is one thing. We were very confident we could intervene in the system and create conditions for Canadian transfer of detainees where we would meet our obligations and we could be confident that Afghans were meeting their commitments, and the facts show that over time, we did 175 visits. While there were some early reports of mistreatment, many of which probably predated our arrangement, we went month after month, a visit every five days, and we could speak with confidence in a way that we could not before as to the treatment of Canadian-transferred detainees.

If we had not done this, we would not be able to do that. So that's a really important assertion. We would never have done that.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

You can answer the other questions, but here is another. I want the others answered as well.