Afghanistan committee  With detainees, I was present for 26 monitoring interviews, and I had over 33 visits to Sarposa. I spoke to prisoners on a regular basis. I spoke to prisoner advocates on a regular basis. So the interaction was constant.

Afghanistan committee  I have 28 years' experience working in the federal correctional facility.

Afghanistan committee  All my reports went up the chain as I wrote them. They were directly taken from my field notes, and I was never asked to change any reports or limit any of my comments.

Afghanistan committee  Yes, sir.

Afghanistan committee  These were, yes, sir.

Afghanistan committee  --and it's consistent with the fact that it's speaking to allegations.

Afghanistan committee  Yes.

Afghanistan committee  I started with the detainee monitoring after the agreement, so our first visit would have been in June.

Afghanistan committee  Yes.

Afghanistan committee  From June to December I was involved in sitting in on the detainee monitoring interviews.

Afghanistan committee  We would ask the facilities. Sometimes dates and times were very difficult to establish, so we would ask them. We would try to establish timeframes, but in that theatre and in that culture, it was hard for them sometimes to describe dates and times and places.

Afghanistan committee  The experience I had was that I had no significant signs of torture; I had allegations of abuse.

Afghanistan committee  I didn't speak to torture specifically, because that's a leading question. We had a framework of asking questions with regard to treatment behaviour, human rights conditions, all those types of things. We took the information that was given to us, and any allegation that was made I reported upwards.

Afghanistan committee  Sir, I can give you an example. We had a prisoner who said, “I was tortured”, and we said could you explain that word--because we're using an interpreter, we're speaking in Dari or Pashto--and he said, “Someone slapped me and called me a bad name.”

Afghanistan committee  That doesn't mean that it took place. It's an allegation of something he felt had happened to him.