Mr. Speaker, I will certainly change the wording of the exact quote. It read:
[The Prime Minister's] government knew from its own officials that prisoners held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of torture, abuse and extrajudicial killing.
On April 25, 2007, Colvin filed four reports on detainees, including two formal ones sent to senior officials in Ottawa, including the head of the Afghanistan task force.
On April 29, 2007, Conservatives continued to deny detainee abuse, by saying:
We have yet to see one specific allegation of torture. If they have a specific name, we'd be happy to have it investigated and chased down,
That was the current Minister of Public Safety on CTV's Question Period.
On October 28, 2009, the NDP foreign affairs critic and member for Ottawa Centre tabled a motion that read:
That the Committee hold hearings regarding the transfer of Afghan detainees from the Canadian Forces to Afghan authorities.
The motion was adopted by the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan. It was in front of that committee that Richard Colvin gave his explosive testimony. Colvin, who was stationed in Afghanistan in 2006, testified that torture was standard operating procedure and that it was likely all Afghan prisoners handed over by Canadian Forces were subjected to torture.
Colvin filed multiple reports on prisoner treatment, sending them to more than 70 senior military and government officials. No government action was taken in response to the reports, and he and others were told by senior Canadian government officials to stop putting their concerns in writing.
The current defence minister responded by characterizing Colvin's testimony as “not credible or as unproven allegations based on lies by Taliban prisoners”.
Emails obtained by the media show that the Prime Minister's Office was warned in 2006 of the abuse concerns. A former government official has said that it was virtually impossible that the minister would not have at least been briefed about the torture concerns.
In fact, despite the defence minister's contention last week that not a single Taliban prisoner turned over by Canadian Forces can be proven to have been abused, the transfer of detainees to Afghans was stopped twice in 2007.
I thought the editorial in last week's, Globe and Mail made the point, spot on:
The federal government's dissembling on abuse Afghan detainees suffered after they left the hands of Canadian Forces is now transparent. The government must be held to account...If Canada knew about torture, and allowed it to continue, the government needs to say so, and say why. Instead of more attacks on public servants, Canadians deserve unconditioned and complete answers.
The only way Canadians are going to get those answers is through a full public inquiry. The inquiry must have access to all government documents relevant to the torture of Afghan detainees.
If the government has been truthful with Canadians, then it has nothing to fear from the inquiry, but Canadians have a lot to gain and they have a right to know. The treatment of Afghan detainees is about human rights and it is about justice.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. would remind us, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”.