Afghanistan Committee on April 21st, 2010

[David Sproule]

Our assurances were based on the fact that the Afghanistan government signed a memorandum of understanding in December of 2005, which was their obligation that they'd entered into to ensure that detainees were treated well. We also had further confidence by the fact that they explicitly—

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

May I interrupt you to just say that you were well aware that the participants were not only from the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan? The Canadian Forces and the Minister of Defence for Afghanistan were also there. As a result, through the Canadian Forces and the general who signed, Canada was part of the arrangement and thereby responsible for the implementation of this arrangement.

[David Sproule]

The arrangement was signed by General Hillier. This was a memorandum of understanding between the ministry of defence of Afghanistan and the armed forces of Canada. It was not a treaty; it was consistent with many MOUs that we sign with many countries. It was quite appropriate to enter into this kind of agreement, keeping in mind that at the very same time we signed with the Afghan government an agreement with regard to technical arrangements, which was the plan for the rules under which our armed forces would operate in Afghanistan. And this was primarily a defence-to-defence agreement.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

I have one last comment. You had no assurance that this commitment to the detainees would be kept.

[David Sproule]

We had the assurance of them signing this agreement specifically, and during the course of my tenure in Afghanistan, not a single incident was brought to our attention of abuse of a Canadian detainee. And, wherever we could, we improved our ability to ascertain the treatment of detainees and assisted the Afghanistan government in improving its ability to provide proper oversight and facilities for the detainees.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Monsieur Bachand.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Lalani.

Mr. Lalani, in his testimony, Mr. Colvin talked about you, not always in a very nice way, I must admit.

He said that censorship expanded with the arrival of Arif Lalani as Canada's new ambassador to Afghanistan in May 2007, and that “Immediately thereafter, the paper trail on detainees was reduced”. He also said, “Reports on detainees began sometimes to be censored, with crucial information removed”.

The Globe and Mail released a memo. Could you take a look, because, on the left, we can read the following: “Richard, you should go with my list.”? The names of the people he was supposed to send the report to were crossed out; they just put “Proudfoot, Buck” and a few names only. Could you look at that document? Do you recognize it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Bachand, do you have that document for the rest of the committee?

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

No. I just want to know if the witness recognizes the document.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Just on that point for the committee, I think it's important that we bring documents as committee members to the committee. We have certain rules around those documents. They can't be passed out until we have translation, until.... There are a number of other rules, but sometimes when documents are brought by those who are giving testimony, we may stretch the rules a little bit. This time I may allow this--

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

--but next time.... Whenever a member of this committee brings a document, be prepared to pass it out so that all people can see the document.

Continue, Mr. Lalani.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Do you recognize the document?

[Arif Lalani]

Yes.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Did you make a note on the left side so that they would go with the list you provided?

[Arif Lalani]

Absolutely.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Could you tell us why you censored that document?

[Arif Lalani]

I apologize, but I will be answering in English.

I'm happy to talk to you about this. I recognize the document. It's one page; there are more pages. But you want to talk about the distribution, so let me certainly do that.

One of the issues that had come out in previous reporting and previous discussions, and that was part of new standard operating procedures that we were trying to put in place to regularize the system of dealing with this file, was to make sure that we had identified certain people who were identified for this file and therefore accountable to respond to this file. In some ways, I think some of you might agree, the best way somebody could assure that I don't read something is to put me on a cc list of 100 people.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Okay--

[Arif Lalani]

If I might just finish, because I know this is an issue that has come up; if you look at who the distribution went to, I know that these are not familiar people or addresses of people. Basically, what I had said--keep in mind, also, that this was, I think, my fourth day on the job after having negotiated the agreement with Richard and with others—was that what we ought to do was send this thing to the people who are in a position to take a decision, which is the head of the task force in Ottawa at the foreign ministry, the director general there, the person at the Privy Council Office who's in charge of the file, and the two addresses in Kandahar, one at the base and one at the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team. I also put in there that we'd leave further distribution to FTAG. It was just trying to kind of get the message to the right people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Bachand, we're a minute and a half over already, so we'll come back on the second round. You will get another round.

We'll now come back to the government side, to Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I first would like to thank all three witnesses very much for coming today. Also, the three of them span the period of time from 2005 onward to 2009; that period was a very crucial one for Canada, because that is when we started moving into the country, started building the capacity, started having detainees.

As you have stated quite clearly, there was a process evolving throughout this time, and all three of you were involved in this process. One was the identification of the deficiencies of the first agreement that were coming up and that you noticed, which, as Ambassador Sproule pointed out, was during his campaign; then it went to Arif Lalani's, when the new agreement came into place, and then to Mr. Hoffmann, with the operation of this new agreement came through.

But very clearly and importantly, all three of your jobs underline one very serious thing that everybody must understand, which was how to meet our international obligations, as you rightly pointed out, under the Geneva Convention and this.

Because today we are talking about detainees, I will go to the question of the detainees. Very quickly, I will go to Ambassador Sproule.

Ambassador Sproule, during your time or during Arif Lalani's time, Mr. Richard Colvin wrote a lot of reports during his time, as Mr. Arif Lalani has said, but at no given time did he ever say--or do you know that he said it, or perhaps you could tell the committee whether he said--that we should stop the transfer of detainees.

[David Sproule]

No, he never did.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

He never said that we should stop the transfer. Of course, the environment was such that we were all working towards that, but never during all of his....

Arif--Ambassador Lalani--would you like to tell the committee during your time out there when this robust agreement was already in place...? During one of your official visits in November, you did get given information that one detainee was very seriously mistreated. Would you tell the committee what action you guys took once you got that information so that we and everybody could understand that you acted very rapidly to fulfill the agreement? Perhaps you can shed light on that.

[Arif Lalani]

I'm happy to--and it's still “Arif”.

We did have a serious incident in November after the agreement was in place and we were monitoring very regularly. I should point out that I'm also going to refer to Ron, who was my deputy; we were interchangeable. There was a period in November when I was out of the country and Ron was chargé. So we both acted on this particular case, but I think it's a good example.

So in November, in one of our monitoring missions, at the end of it, there were some allegations made. The allegations were very clearly--I think to everybody doing the inspection--probably of a different magnitude, because we could see some of the responses on the person. I think there were some things in the holding cell that were seen by people. So we moved very quickly. Our standard operating procedures were activated immediately. That meant notifying people in Ottawa. It meant notifying the ICRC. It meant notifying the Afghan human rights commission. It meant notifying Afghan authorities at the highest levels in Kabul.

A number of things came about as a result of that. A decision was made by the commander on the ground to immediately suspend the transfers until we could resume confidence in the system. What resulted then was in fact an even more intense monitoring regime to continue to go back very regularly to that area.

One of the things we had to do was actually protect the people who might be making allegations. We had to be very careful about how we did the monitoring missions and how we continued to do them as we tried to bring things to light.