Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, honourable members, I will begin by explaining briefly who I am and the nature of my involvement with the Afghanistan file.
I've been in government for some 18 years, 15 with the Department of Foreign Affairs and three with National Defence. I have worked on Afghanistan detainee issues in three separate capacities. The first time was in early 2005 as deputy director of the defence and security relations division of DFAIT. Between April 2006 and July 2007, I was political director of Canada's provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, with the exception of the months of May and June of 2006, which were covered by Richard Colvin. After my return from Afghanistan, I was transferred to the Department of National Defence, where I was director of the unit responsible for Afghanistan policy from October 2007 to February 2009.
I would like to address these three assignments in chronological order.
In 2005 I participated in interdepartmental meetings that considered options for how to handle future detainees in Afghanistan. The decision to base our regime on transfer to Afghan authorities was made in large part because most detainees would be Afghan citizens on Afghan soil. Transferring detainees to the host government was a question of respect for Afghan sovereignty.
I would like to underscore that in 2005 departments were aware that the Afghan detention system had serious failings. There was a risk that prisoners might be mistreated, so steps were taken to mitigate that risk. Canada sought and received assurances from the Government of Afghanistan that it would respect international standards of treatment and provide access to both the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, AIHRC. However, looking back now with the benefit of practical experience in Kandahar, it is clear this was not sufficient.
With the arrangement put in place, we obtained little information on the detainees transferred between February 2006 and April 2007. It has been alleged that during this period, Canadian authorities knew that the detainees we transferred to Afghan prisons were being tortured. This is borne out neither by my memory of my time in Kandahar, nor by the written records that I have reviewed in preparation for this presentation.
Prior to April 2007, my engagement on detainee issues focused on capacity-building. I had no mandate to engage in monitoring. Nonetheless, in the course of my duties in Kandahar, I met with the ICRC and the AIHRC. I met with Afghan judges, prosecutors, prison officials, and police. I met with political figures, with village elders, and with farmers. I met with the UN, with NGOs, and with NATO allies. I even met with the Kandahar Council of Religious Scholars. None of these contacts produced information to the effect that Canadian-transferred detainees were being abused or that our detainee arrangement was not being respected by Afghan authorities. Had I obtained such information, I would have reported this to Ottawa and recommended a course of action.
The committee is, I gather, aware that messages were sent from the embassy in Kabul on detainee issues between February 2006 and March 2007. Having gone back and reviewed the documentation from this period--and I specify “this period”--I find that the documents add nothing of significance to what we already knew in 2005. They simply confirm that abuse of detainees was a risk in Afghanistan. None of them contain specific information about treatment of detainees transferred by Canada, none of them contain specific information about facilities to which Canada was transferring detainees, and, most importantly, in none of these messages did the embassy recommend substantive changes to detainee policy.
It is possible that there is additional material of which I am not aware. It is possible that there were events that to me, stationed at the PRT, were not visible.
However, to the best of my knowledge, the first information alleging abuse of Canadian-transferred detainees came to light in the context of press reports published in April 2007. These reports contained multiple allegations of torture at the facility of the National Directorate of Security or NDS
or in English, the NDS,
in Kandahar City.
The allegations were taken very seriously both at headquarters and in the field, and there was a vigorous exchange of views on what needed to be done. There was also a rapid response. Within 48 hours I had been sent with a colleague from the Correctional Service of Canada to conduct a preliminary inspection of the NDS facility.
That visit generated two allegations of abuse, conveyed to me personally. Démarches were then made at the highest levels. The ICRC and the AIHRC were notified, and within 10 days a new arrangement had been agreed to with the government of Afghanistan. This supplementary arrangement empowered Canadian monitors to visit without prior notice and to hold private interviews with detainees. It also included Afghan commitments to investigate and prosecute allegations, and several other significant improvements.
The May 3, 2007, supplementary arrangement, while a much more robust regime, is not a panacea. Full implementation of the arrangement is not an easy task. Every monitoring visit goes through the streets of Kandahar to a predictable location that is closely watched by insurgents and occasionally attacked. Every trip risks the lives of not only the monitoring team but of all the personnel in the security detail, and it uses scarce PRT resources that are then not available for patrols to advance Canadian development projects or engage villagers out in the districts. For every call to do more monitoring, there are trade-offs to be made, but overall the supplementary arrangement is among the strongest models in NATO for dealing with detainees.
There have, however, been some challenges in ensuring full implementation. This became clear in November 2007, after my return to Ottawa. At that time, as the Committee is aware, there was a compelling allegation of torture that caused a suspension of transfers. It took some months, a significant escalation in monitoring and extensive engagement with the NDS, to restore confidence that detainees we transferred would not be at significant risk of abuse.
In the Afghan context, it will never be possible to completely eliminate all risk of torture. But when used to the full, the supplementary arrangement does offer a robust deterrent and a means to detect violations should any occur. As such, it has been instrumental in changing the workings of the NDS in Kandahar, a step that has benefited not just Canadian-transferred detainees, but all detainees held by the NDS.
I would like to close on a personal note. Since the committee hearings last November, I have struggled with a fair amount of self-doubt. It has been alleged that in the period leading up to March 2007, Canadian authorities knew that we were transferring detainees to torture. I was the DFAIT representative on the ground. I was the person meeting with the local representatives of the AIHRC and the ICRC, but it was only in April 2007 that it became clear to me that our detainee arrangement was not working. I was left wondering if I had overlooked information I should have seen. If everybody supposedly knew, then what had I missed? My review of documentation in preparation for this meeting has gone some way to reassure me. I saw nothing in the record through March 2007 that indicated Canadian-transferred detainees were being abused, nothing that changed the baseline understanding from 2005, when the original arrangement was put in place; and the record very clearly shows that when serious allegations were brought forward, in April 2007, firm and rapid action was taken.
In my experience working on this file, there have been hard lessons, and these deserve to be examined to ensure that they are learned for the future. But overall, what I have seen has been the work of a team of dedicated individuals—civilian and military—doing their best to ensure detainees are treated humanely and in accordance with Canada's international obligations. They have done this in harsh, difficult, and often dangerous conditions; and in the best Canadian tradition, when they have seen problems, they have done their best to address them. It has been my privilege to work alongside them.
Thank you.