Opposition MPs are prepared to continue Parliamentary hearings into prisoner torture in Afghanistan for a full year as they press Prime Minister Stephen Harper for a judicial inquiry into the fate of detainees captured by Canadian soldiers.

Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver South, B.C.) said the lists of contacts and names on internal emails from diplomat whistleblower Richard Colvin are so extensive there is virtually no end to the number of witnesses the special Commons committee on Afghanistan can call.

"Some of us are determined that we will not stop hearings on this," Mr. Dosanjh said in an interview with The Hill Times. "There are so many names on those email chains, if you invited each and every one of those names to come, this could stretch out for a year. I don't believe these kinds of issues ever die. This is never going to go away."

Mr. Dosanjh made the comments after Conservative MPs claimed success last week in their quest to absolve Canadian commanders and Foreign Affairs officials over Mr. Colvin's allegations, based on his observations and service as a Foreign Affairs political officer in Afghanistan in 2006, that it was likely Afghan detainees Canadian troops turned over to the Afghanistan National Directorate of Security were tortured. The Conservatives are also attempting to disprove, through their questions to military and public service witnesses at the committee, Mr. Colvin's claims that his attempts to draw attention to the likelihood of torture were suppressed by seniors in the Foreign Affairs Department.

Conservative MPs Jim Abbott (Kootenay Columbia, B.C.) and Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre, Alta.) said the latest testimony last week from two senior public servants who held key posts at Foreign Affairs while the transfers were taking place, and a senior Correctional Service of Canada officer who interviewed prisoners in Afghan jails, demonstrated no evidence has yet been revealed that detainees the Canadians transferred to the NDS were subsequently tortured.

But interviews with opposition MPs who questioned the same witnesses showed they came away from the same committee meeting with conclusions that were exactly the opposite.

The opposition claimed testimony from one of the witnesses, Correctional Service officer Linda Garwood-Filbert, demonstrated the Canadian government had irrefutable evidence in 2007 that three detainees transferred by Canadian soldiers claimed they had been tortured. They said Ms. Garwood-Filbert's testimony that when she interviewed them they had no physical signs of abuse to back up their claims was undependable, since she also admitted she did not ask them when they had been abused.

Mr. Dosanjh and Liberal MP Bob Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) also seized on Ms. Garwood-Filbert's confirmation that the director of investigations for the NDS was dismissed by the Afghan government after a Canadian correctional officer discovered in early November, 2007, that the director had a braided electrical cable in his office. Ms. Garwood-Filbert confirmed the cable was known to be an instrument of torture.

Canada reached a new agreement for prisoner transfers with Afghanistan in May 2007, after initial internal and international concerns in 2006. But despite that, the government secretly suspended detainee transfers in November 2007, 18 months after Mr. Colvin sent his first report of concern about the treatment of detainees, and in the midst of a Federal Court lawsuit over detainee treatment that had been launched by Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

The Justice Department disclosed the transfer suspension in January 2008, only days before the final hearing in the case was set to begin on Jan. 24. Former Gen. Rick Hillier, commanding general of the Canadian Forces at the time, testified at the Afghanistan committee that David Mulroney, then associate deputy minister of foreign affairs in charge of the Afghanistan file, tried to pressure the army on Jan. 29 into resuming prisoner transfers because the government believed "conditions have been reset" in the prisons. When Mr. Mulroney wrote the letter, the judge in the Federal Court detainee lawsuit had not yet released her ruling, which eventually rejected the Amnesty International bid for a court-ordered halt to the transfers.

Mr. Abbott said his questions at the committee meeting were aimed at disproving Mr. Colvin's claims the government attempted to suppress warnings about potential prisoner abuse. In answer to Mr. Abbott's questions, Douglas Proudfoot, the first director of the Foreign Affairs Department's Afghanistan Task Force in 2006, replied only that "we had political direction to seek assurances of humane treatment and it was in that context that we did additional work that culminated in the 2007 supplementary arrangement."

Colleen Swords, who became assistant deputy minister for international security at the Foreign Affairs Department in September 2006 as Canadian troops were in the midst of their first major battles with Taliban forces, also denied political interference.

"I made the point of drawing out from them, as you're well aware, that there is no political connection, nor did they have any political interference, I think that's really the story," Mr. Abbott said later.

Mr. Hawn, a former squadron commander and CF-18 pilot in the Canadian Air Force, argued that after testimony from three former commanding generals, including former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier, three diplomats who were in charge of various aspects of the Afghanistan mission and the correctional service of Canada inspector, the committee has not yet uncovered evidence Canadian detainees were tortured after transfer to the Afghan security police.

"The question is did Canadians knowingly transfer detainees to be tortured?" said Mr. Hawn. "The answer to that question is an unequivocal no. Every person who has testified for us, with the exception of Richard Colvin, has said the same thing."

Declared Mr. Hawn: "I mean, what's being suggested here is that a wide, wide range of military members, from the lowest to the highest levels, and diplomats from the lowest to the highest levels, and government were intentionally putting people in danger of torture and effectively committing war crimes. That's just an outrageous, absolutely outrageous assumption. When the opposition says this is not about the military, it is about the military. The military knows it's about the military, they were the guys making the transfer decisions, to transfer or not to transfer, on the ground. And they made good decisions, based on everything they had available to them at the time."

Mr. Dosanjh and fellow Liberal MP Bob Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) pointed out that international and Canadian law meant the transfers should have been halted simply because of abundant evidence at the time that the detainees were likely to face torture. Direct evidence of torture was not required.

"All the evidence, all the information about conditions in that country in 2006 was crystal clear," said Mr. Rae. "Torture was widespread, abuse of prisoners was widespread and anybody who says 'we don't know about that' is just putting their head in the sand."

Conservative whip Gordon O'Connor (Carleton-Mississippi Mills, Ont.), who was minister of defence from February of 2006 to November 2007, is scheduled to testify at the committee this week along with current Defence Minister Peter MacKay (Central Nova, N.S.) and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon (Pontiac, Que.). Former Liberal MP Bill Graham, who was defence minister in 2005 when the first prisoner transfer agreement was reached with Afghanistan, has also been invited to testify.

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