Feds and army brass deepened detainee crisis: transcripts Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry told there was a state of 'mass confusion' over transfers and scarce resources for military police. By TIM NAUMETZ Published December 21, 2009

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Photograph courtesy DND/CF Combat Camera

Into Afghanistan: According to testimony filed with the Military Police Complaints Commission, the government and army brass hindered Canadian troops as they were attempting to process Afghanistan detainees in compliance with international law.

Orders from former Canadian Forces chief of defence staff Rick Hillier and the federal Cabinet hindered Canadian troops as they were attempting to process Afghanistan detainees in compliance with international war law and likely contributed to severe detention conditions at the military police compound in Kandahar, previously unreleased documents indicate.

The government and top commanders pressured troops in Afghanistan for the first year of the Kandahar mission to hand detainees over to Afghan forces so quickly that a senior Military Police officer used a dramatically exaggerated example to urge more caution: He warned a commanding general that Canadians were acting so hastily they could have unwittingly let Osama Bin Laden slip out of their hands.

Later, after the detainee controversy broke out in Canada in February, 2007, the government and Hillier reversed their position on rapid transfer and secretly halted all transfers and releases, leading to disastrous overcrowding and at least one lengthy detention of a man at the Kandahar detention compound who was eventually released without charge, investigative interviews into allegations of detainee abuse show.

Maj. Kevin Rowcliffe, then a staff adviser to Lt.- Gen. Michel Gauthier, second in command of the Afghanistan mission under Mr. Hillier, was concerned even in early stages of the Afghanistan mission of the potential for torture abuse and expressed concern at the very top that Canadians were transferring detainees to Afghan police and intelligence forces "not knowing what happens to them after they're handed over."

Maj. Rowcliffe and two other Military Police officers who were interviewed for the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry revealed a state of "mass confusion" over transfers, scarce resources for military police in Kandahar and concern from the police themselves over the way generals in Ottawa, under pressure from the government, were handling the detainee controversy as it later made front-page news in Canada and burst onto the House of Commons floor.

Copies of classified transcripts of the Military Police Complaints Commission interview were obtained by The Hill Times.

Though censored between the time the interviews were conducted and then filed at the commission, with some sentences and words redacted, the transcripts reveal aspects of the Kandahar mission that have not yet been made public. Some elements of the interviews made it into a commission report last April, but other aspects not yet known by MPs will only raise more questions for the Commons committee that is holding an inquiry into Afghan prisoner transfers.

The transcripts include a shocking account of an apparently innocent Afghan detainee who was an unintended victim of the government's initial, unpublicized, response to the prisoner controversy when it first erupted in February, 2007.

The government reversed its quick-transfer policy and secretly ordered the forces to stop transfers entirely after two human rights groups filed a Federal Court lawsuit over detainees in February, 2007, the statements reveal.

A transcript of one of the interviews with the Military Police Complaints Commission investigators reveals the army police compound in Kandahar could do nothing as the detainee baked in 140-degree heat in a detention centre designed to hold a handful of prisoners for a maximum of 96 hours.

Attempts to cool the man with a water-dispensing ceiling fan—known as a "swamp cooler"—failed when the fan clogged with the chemically treated water at the Kandahar Air Field base. The military police had to borrow the fan from U.S. troops after they were ordered to give other fans they were using to other components of the Canadian base. The man, later released to his family with gifts intended to make amends, was suffering to the point his screams prompted soldiers in a nearby compound to ask the police if they were keeping a dog in the detention centre.

A military police officer told the commission investigators that commanders in Ottawa repeatedly denied pleas to release the man, and his plight became a "nightmare."

"He would scream and yell and climb the cage," Sgt. Carol Utton told the investigators. "At one point we had to go in and take the plastic knife from him, because he was trying to do stuff. One time he screamed and yelled and they thought he was having a heart attack, so they had to call the ambulance to get him. It was radiant heat, but the facility just was not made to hold somebody that long."

All references to the date of the man's capture and his duration of detention with the Canadians were censored out of the transcript of the interview that ended up in the commission's records.

"They could not release him," Sgt. Utton said. "They wanted to release him but we got orders from CEFCOM (Canadian Expeditionary Force Command in Ottawa), the task force commander, that we could not release ... I mean, we did everything we could, it was just our hands were tied between, it was the political stuff in Canada ... so finally, when we did release him, I know the cultural adviser said, you know what has been given, because I guess he was out to get sugar for his family or something, so we ended up giving him a bag of sugar ... I know I gave him toothbrushes. I gave him pens and paper for his kids so they could go to school, and he was happy to get the stuff and then we released him."

The interview also includes suggestions of general overpopulation in the detention centre after transfers ceased.Among other things, the military statements show that Mr. Hillier, likely on instructions from Cabinet and then-defence minister Gordon O'Connor, ordered the halt to detainee transfers sometime in early 2007 after the Federal Court case began along with a separate Military Police Complaints Commission investigation into detainee treatment.

Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association began the court action in an attempt to halt prisoner transfers because of torture allegations, and continued the legal action for a year without knowledge the army suspended transfers shortly after the case began. The transfers were resumed in May, 2007, after a new prisoner agreement was reached with Afghanistan, but secretly suspended again in November when further torture evidence was found.

Initially, Sgt. Utton told the investigators, Canadian troops battling Taliban insurgents transferred some of their captives directly to Afghan police or security forces "in the field" but she said that stopped after "rumours" began circulating—apparently about the fate of the detainees after they were transferred. The redacted interviews suggest the battlefield grapevine include rumours about detainees being killed after transfer. A military police captain told the interviewers one of the soldiers in his platoon told the captain he "heard they [a group of detainees] ended up in a ditch, dead."

But the captain, Jason Tarzwell, admonished the soldier after he said he had no information to base the gossip on, and did not look into the rumour.

Sgt. Utton said detainees began flooding into the detention centre at Kandahar Air Field after the order to halt transfers in the field, but before the complete halt of all transfers. The detention centre would at times be flooded with prisoners. Prior to that, the infantry on missions outside the base would send the military police only initial capture reports, with statements describing the release "in the field" and naming the Aghan security forces that took custody.

"And I know that those stopped and then [censored] would go out on mission and we'd get warnings, you know, they were going to take [censored] ... get ready for [censored] detainees. And sure enough, they would take, I don't know if it was the targeting or whatever mission they were on ... we would get...all of a sudden it would start and we were getting like double-digit detainees, which was unheard of. And before, like we used to get the capture and release forms; that's if they gave them to us."

The transcripts contain elements that are central to attempts over the past month by Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and his government to portray the opposition probe of detainee transfers as an attack against the integrity and dedication of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Critics accuse the government of using the troops as a shield against the questions from the opposition parties, who in turn insist they are not blaming the soldiers over claims transfers took place despite the likelihood of subsequent torture.

The statements from Sgt. Utton, Maj. Rowcliffe and Capt. Tarszell indicate professional concern and adherence to international prisoner detention rules on the part of soldiers, medical personnel and lower ranks of military police at the Kandahar Air Field base.

Sgt. Utton said Canadian doctors treated two detainees who arrived by helicopter suffering from gunshot wounds before they attended to a wounded Canadian soldier who arrived with them. "The two detainees were taken first and the Canadian with half his finger blown off sat and waited till they were given proper medical care and we photographed them," she said.

Hospital triage is covered by the Geneva Conventions, which requires that prisoners of war or detainees in an undeclared war have the same status for medical treatment as the soldiers of the forces that capture them.

Maj. Rowcliffe also expressed concern for detainees, which he said he voiced while serving at the Canadian Forces expeditionary command in Ottawa. Maj. Rowcliffe, a specialist in force base protection who had helped to establish and plan the Canadian base at Kandahar, indicated in his statement to the investigators that the Canadians had little information about the fate of detainees following transfer, and he attempted to pressure the military police commander in Kandahar to obtain more post-transfer information.

"Once we did start taking detainees, and I'm thinking more at the time when I got to CEFCOM, my concerns were handing them over and not knowing what happens to them after they're handed over. That was a major concern I had ... the message I was getting back was, no, that was not the position that was being taken in theatre and he [the major commanding the Kandahar military police unit] was not staffed for that role."

The commission last April censured the Kandahar military police commander, Maj. David Fraser, over a detainee incident that sparked the original commission inquiry into a complaint about prisoner treatment, filed by University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran.

The commission ruled Canadian soldiers had not injured a combat detainee unjustifiably when he resisted capture, but found Fraser wrongly allowed pressure from headquarters for early release of the detainee to prevent proper transfer procedures, including pre-release interrogation for the detainee's background and possible intelligence. Afghan police later released the prisoner because the Canadians provided no information about his capture or background. The detainee was subsequently killed in a battle with the Canadians or other coalition forces, according to the transcripts.

Maj. Rowcliffe said he raised the same concern about post-transfer inquiries with Lieutenant General Gauthier, among the first witnesses who testified at the Commons committee hearings earlier this month. Lt. Gen. Gauthier told MPs the first time any allegation of torture was raised with him was in April 2007, with the publication of a Globe and Mail news story containing allegations of torture from detainees who had been transferred. The general's testimony contradicted former diplomat Richard Colvin's claim he began reporting possible or likely torture as early as May, 2006. Lt.-Gen. Gauthier said the military took the detainee question seriously from the start of the Canadian mission and adapted as it acquired more information. "There was no moss growing on anyone in theatre or anywhere else on this issue, I can assure you," he told the committee.

But military police Maj. Rowcliffe suggested to the commission investigators he did not get a positive response from Lt.-Gen. Gauthier when he raised concern over the lack of information about detainees after Canadians transferred them to Afghan forces. He likened Lt.-Gen. Gauthier's response to the lack of interest he received from the Kandahar base police commander.

"As his [Lt.-Gen. Gauthier's] adviser, I was making him aware of these concerns as well, that we're handing them over but we don't know what happens afterwards, and the message I was getting back, that we need to hand them over, I think it's in 72 hours, that's the maximum and basically (censored). I was a little bit skeptical of that whole scenario, but that was the position of the Government of Canada and that was the position I was getting from the military."

"I was under pressure to get Maj. Fraser to turn over detainees as quickly as possible and I've had many discussions with Gen. Gauthier about this, saying sir I understand the time sensitiveness of this issue to the government of Canada, but we may have Osama Bin Laden, yet you are trying to get me to give him over as quickly as possible," Maj. Rowcliffe told the investigators.

Most of Maj. Rowcliffe's next sentence was censored from the transcript.

The government's repeated efforts to halt or impede the Military Police Complaints Commission from continuing with its inquiry into detainee transfers has so far prevented the witness interviews from being aired publicly or dealt with at the commission. The documents and other evidence, however, could be subject to an opposition motion passed by the Commons before Christmas, ordering the government to produce a sweeping range of documents it has so far withheld on grounds of national security provisions of the Canada Evidence Act.

The government's declaration it will not comply with the motion, combined with its refusal over the Christmas break to take part in an emergency meeting of the special committee on Afghanistan, could lead to an unprecedented confrontation when Parliament reconvenes on Jan. 25.

The opposition vows it will not back down.

"We're not going to throw up our hands because the prime minister and his party want to ignore the democratic institutions of this country," NDP MP Jack Harris (St. John's East, Nfld.) told a news conference. "If they want to run away from the facts and if they want to refuse to abide by what's going on in the House of Commons, the people of Canada will have a view on that."

The Hill Times