Afghanistan committee  I was aware of those allegations. Those were fairly widespread in Afghanistan, and they were widespread about a lot of very senior people who had come out of 20 or 30 years of chaos. With respect to those allegations, let me say a couple of things. We asked the PRT and others to investigate.

Afghanistan committee  We were all aware through 2006. The reason we did the 2005 arrangement was because we wanted to be sure that we were avoiding, to the extent possible, any threat of mistreatment. Our understanding of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan grew month by month. Certainly through 2006 people were looking at whether we could work in Afghan prisons and how we'd do it in terms of capacity building.

Afghanistan committee  There was no evidence of abuse of Canadian-transferred detainees, but one of the reasons we negotiated the new arrangement was so that we could develop a much better database and record system, and we'd have eyes on things through our monitoring. People had gone into the prisons, but it wasn't in terms of specific monitoring visits.

Afghanistan committee  That was what was expected of us. Of course the particular focus was on our responsibilities toward Canadian-transferred detainees, but also through human rights reports we were looking at the larger human rights situation in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan committee  I made it my business to make sure that I talked to everybody in the system. I didn't think that had been done enough before.

Afghanistan committee  Yes.

Afghanistan committee  I'm sorry, in which report?

Afghanistan committee  In this report?

Afghanistan committee  I'd have to read it. If you don't see it....

Afghanistan committee  There were not many visits. It took time to build up those—

Afghanistan committee  Yes.

Afghanistan committee  In 2006 I was at the PCO; I wasn't in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan committee  Yes.

Afghanistan committee  There was no doubt in anybody's mind that the Afghan system was riddled with problems. It was a developing country that had been devastated by 30 years of war. We knew that. We had a problem, in that we had people captured on the battlefield who were a threat to Afghans and Canadians.

Afghanistan committee  It is, if we have Ambassador Lalani's name on this. Actually, he arrived at the very end of April and within a week had negotiated the new arrangement.