Reports confirm Canada’s complicity in Afghan state torture

Developments this week, including a federal government report and a newspaper exposé, have established irrefutably that the claims of Stephen Harper and his Conservative government that they were not aware that prisoners transferred to Afghan authorities by the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were being tortured, or worse, are utterly false.

On Wednesday the Globe and Mail published excerpts of a document prepared by Canadian diplomats in Kabul that informs the government that prisoners in the custody of Afghan authorities face the possibility of abuse, torture and extra-judicial execution.

The government had initially denied the existence of such a document, stating in writing that “no such report on human-rights performance in other countries exists.” The Globe and Mail subsequently used the access of information law to force the government to turn over a copy of the report, which is titled “Afghanistan 2006: Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights.” But the report given the Globe had been heavily censored. In the name of “national security,” numerous passages depicting the deplorable human rights situation in Afghanistan and the violation of basic civil liberties by Afghan authorities were blacked out.

The Globe was able, however, to obtain a more complete version of the report, apparently as the result of a leak. The censored passages included the assertions that ““Extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are all too common” and that “the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan deteriorated in 2006.”

More
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/afgh-a27.shtml