Afghanistan Committee on April 21st, 2010

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

We understood that, absolutely, but I'm just getting from you what you will confirm, then, which is that when an allegation about torture was made by a detainee or by another source, it was the NDS who investigated that.

[Arif Lalani]

I think, from my recollection--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt. I know that the ICRC was involved and I understand their mandate, but according to the agreement.... I mean, Ms. Buck made this statement in Federal Court as well: that it was the NDS that would be responsible for following up.

[Arif Lalani]

From my recollection of the cases that involved the NDS, they most likely made the investigation.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Do you understand why I would have concerns, as would many others, that in the case of Mr. Colvin's claim--

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Very quickly, Mr. Dewar, because your time is up--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

—that there was torture going on and that there were concerns that he had to remove from the report, it wasn't giving the full picture? The fact of the matter, from what we've heard—and I think you've halted the transfer of detainees over concerns about the NDS—is that it really isn't a strong enough agreement to have the NDS investigate itself. Is that appropriate?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Dewar.

[Arif Lalani]

No--

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We're going to come back to you.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

If Mr. Hawn wants to continue on that, it will give them time to answer, but it is Mr. Hawn's time.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Absolutely.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through you, to any one of you, with respect to The Globe and Mail article and the statements attributed to the International Committee of the Red Cross, you work with those folks all the time, and they have very strict guidelines and rules about who they talk to and what they say. Would they ever have engaged a reporter in that kind of dialogue or would they ever have engaged a person at Mr. Colvin's level in that kind of a dialogue publicly?

[Arif Lalani]

I'm sorry, but I missed the first part of the question because I was trying to answer Mr. Dewar.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

The ICRC has very strict rules about who they talk to and what they say and what they don't say. With respect to the article that was just quoted from, by Graeme Smith of The Globe and Mail, would the ICRC have ever talked to a reporter like that?

[Arif Lalani]

I don't know, but what I will tell you is that I would certainly not want to comment about the ICRC's work.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Is it fair to say the ICRC does not comment about their own work either, publicly?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Sproule.

[David Sproule]

Yes, in general, that's their methodology, and it's been successful over many, many decades.

If I could go back to a question, I think there was a suggestion by Mr. Dewar that Mr. Colvin's reports had been censored or edited by Mr. Lalani. I just want to say that I also edited Mr. Colvin's reports. That was part of my responsibility as ambassador, to ensure that the message was clear, that it was coherent, and that it took into account all of the various considerations and information that we had. This is a standard operating procedure. Ambassadors do it. I've done it in all three of my assignments as ambassador, and indeed, Mr. Colvin did it when he was chargé over the reports of those he oversaw during my absence.

I just wanted to clarify that point.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Good. Thank you.

Mr. Dechert, I'll pass it to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Dechert.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Sproule, we've heard a lot about the deficiencies in the 2005 transfer agreement, specifically with respect to lack of a monitoring process, and we've heard that it was different from the British and the Dutch transfer agreements that were put into place around the same time. Can you explain to us why the Canadian agreement would have been different from the British and Dutch agreements and how our agreement was negotiated versus how those agreements were negotiated?

[David Sproule]

Our agreement was based on considerations of what we would need in terms of ensuring international standards for the treatment of detainees as we were about to begin our deployment to Kandahar. Up until that time, the number of detainees in Canadian custody was minimal, and we, as a government, were familiar with decades of work done by the ICRC.

For my part as an international lawyer, the ICRC, and its specific role outlined in the 2005 agreement, was the ideal and appropriate body to oversee the treatment of prisoners and detainees in Afghan institutions. Over and above, I might add, Mr. Dechert, to ensure this even more, we thought it was important to emphasize in that agreement the role of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. So I was very confident that we had dotted our i's and crossed our t's and had what we needed going into our deployment in Kandahar.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Were you aware of the terms of the British and Dutch agreements at that time, and did you consider monitoring?

[David Sproule]

The position we were in is that we were prepared—and it was part of my mandate—to increase the resources of our embassy over time, and we were prepared to establish more elaborate mechanisms, including monitoring mechanisms, as the need arose. So our job was to monitor very carefully the situation and ascertain whether or not we could improve the measures we had in place. In December 2005, I was pretty confident that we had a very good agreement.