Afghanistan Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2009

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

Yes, sir.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

What would a braided piece of electrical cable be used for?

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

I was not present for that. I was not on that visit. This was something that came to my attention on the visit of November 19.

But as allegations that were made throughout.... There was a theme that started to develop. As our monitoring and questioning and the use of our interpreters got better, we started near the end of my tenure there getting a bit of a theme when prisoners or detainees were referring to the use of cables.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

So this cable would be an instrument of torture?

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

That's how it was reported, to my understanding.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

And as a result of the reporting of it by DFAIT, you're telling us that the director of investigations was removed from his job.

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

Yes, sir.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Well, how can anyone say, then, that there was not evidence of...? I mean, if somebody is fired for having a braided electrical cable in his office, presumably that creates a substantial grounds of risk with respect to what would happen to somebody if you went to the office of the director of investigations.

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

At that point, when we had concrete proof, the transfer of detainees ceased.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

How long was this man, the director of investigations.... Do you know?

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

I have no knowledge, sir.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

You found it in his office; presumably it was there before.

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

I was not there during that time, sir, so—

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I understand; I'm not trying to put words in your mouth; I'm just saying it seems to me it's a little hard to say we don't have any evidence of torture but you found an instrument of torture in the office of the director of investigations.

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

DFAIT did; yes, sir.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Yes, DFAIT found that, and as a result he was fired.

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

Yes, and they reported it, and the director was removed.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Right.

[Linda Garwood-Filbert]

What I'm talking about in my statement are things that I have seen or heard personally. That's what I'm speaking to.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I appreciate that entirely.

As I understand international law—and perhaps I could ask Ms. Swords to comment—when we deal with the question of whether we transfer people to another country, if we have substantial grounds—I think that's the legal phrase under the convention of torture—to believe there's a risk of torture, we're not allowed to transfer people to another country. Wouldn't the same principle apply with respect to whether there are substantial grounds, a risk, with respect to torture? If you find an instrument of torture in the office of the director of investigations of the National Directorate of Security, what is that? Doesn't that say...? And how long has this guy been there?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

We need a short response. The time has expired.

[Colleen Swords]

There's never a short legal response. I'm not here as a lawyer, but I think the standard is “substantial risk of torture”, and it has to be with respect to the individual, not generally.

I believe we did take all the measures that were reasonable at the time to ensure we were doing everything we could to minimize substantial risk. You can never eliminate risk altogether, and if that's what we're trying to do, then we will have a great deal of difficulty in being effective in peace operations. We have to have a process in place to try to prevent it from happening, and if we find it has happened, we have to do everything we can to stop it from happening again.

I believe that particular incident is the one that's referred to in the Federal Court in an affidavit by one of my colleagues. We took steps. We raised it at the highest level in the Afghanistan government, and they did what they should. They investigated and removed the person.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Mr. Rae.

We'll go over to the government, and then back to the Bloc.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair; and thank you to the witnesses for coming.

Ms. Swords, I want to go on the record, and I want you to go on the record as well. Mr. Mulroney went on the record. Mr. Proudfoot went on the record. Linda went on the record. Was there any credible and substantiated evidence of torture that you know of with the Canadian-transferred detainees?

[Colleen Swords]

The first allegations I saw with respect to allegations of torture, which were not necessarily about Canadian detainees, were in fact in The Globe and Mail articles in April.

We also got allegations late in April transmitted to two Canadians who were visiting a prison in Kandahar. They were not obviously Canadian-transferred detainees, and they came forward voluntarily. In other words, it wasn't part of our then monitoring mechanism.

Subsequent to that, I think my involvement in June and thereafter was much more peripheral, and there were other people in the lead. I think I'd just confuse everybody if I tried to get to those details.

The first specific allegations we had were in The Globe and Mail, and then one subsequent report later. None of them, as far as we could tell, were in fact Canadian transferred, from the list of names that we had.