The Harper government has now admitted that it knew about concerns of torture to Afghans handed over by Canadian soldiers early in 2006, but didn’t act to change the transfer agreement until media reports emerged a year later. Still, transfers weren’t stopped until a fulltime monitor looked into the allegations late in 2007 – nineteen months after abuses were first reported. Throughout, the Harper government took active steps to cover-up what really happened.
Here’s the timeline of what happened:
August 16, 2005: Canada assumes command of the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar city. Detainees are transferred to U.S. authorities.
December 18, 2005: General Rick Hillier signs a detainee transfer agreement with the government of Afghanistan while Canadians are in a federal election.
February 6, 2006: Peter MacKay is sworn in as foreign affairs minister and Gordon O’Connor is sworn in as defence minister.
March 2006: The U.S. State Department reports that local authorities “continued to routinely torture and abuse detainees. Torture and abuse consisted of pulling out fingernails and toenails, burning with hot oil, beatings, sexual humiliation, and sodomy.”
Spring 2006: Canada’s Conservative government begins transferring detainees to Afghan authorities.130 detainees were handed over under this agreement over the next 14 months.
May 2006: Richard Colvin begins writing memos to senior Canadian officials documenting abuse of detainees when he “became aware of the scope and severity of these problems.”
May 13, 2006: Regarding detainee transfers, Prime Minister Stephen Harper tells the Globe and Mail, “They are handing them over in accord with the treaty that we have signed with the government of Afghanistan to respect all of Canada's obligations under the Geneva Convention... We expect the Afghan government to live up to those obligations, and we have every reason to believe that they will.”
May 31, 2006: Minister Gordon O’Connor tells the House of Commons, “The Red Cross or the Red Crescent is responsible to supervise their treatment once the prisoners are in the hands of the Afghan authorities. If there is something wrong with their treatment, the Red Cross of Red Crescent would inform us and we would take action.” He maintains this position until March of 2007.
June 2, 2006: The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission says that a third of prisoners handed over by Canadians are abused and tortured. Government officials respond that the Red Cross ensures prisoners are properly treated and can be accessed at any time by Red Cross, and that written records for all detainees are made available to them.
The same day, Mr. Colvin sends a memo concerning the risk of torture and/or actual torture of Afghan detainees.
August – December 2006: Mr. Colvin issues three memos covering detainee notification, transfer and substantive treatment concerns, and the annual human rights report of the Canadian embassy in Kabul reports systemic problems of torture in Afghan jails.
February 6, 2007: Allegations of abuse of three Afghans in Canadian custody surface. Days later, the Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC) launches investigations into the treatment of the three Afghan detainees, and a second investigation is launched into whether the handover agreement violates international law and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
March 2007: Mr. Colvin warns Ottawa orally that the “[National Directorate of Security] NDS tortures people and if we don’t want our detainees tortured, we shouldn’t hand them to the NDS.”
March 2, 2007: The three Afghan detainees whose case is being investigated by the MPCC cannot be found after investigators spent a month trying to locate them, in breach of the transfer agreement.
March 8, 2007: Ten months after O’Connor’s first assurances about the Red Cross to Parliament, the Red Cross confirms it is not party to any agreement to monitor detainees, is not monitoring the implementation of it, and would never divulge to Ottawa any abuses it might identity in Afghan prisons. Government officials now confirm that the Red Cross is not required to notify Canada of abuse.
March 16, 2007: The Department of National Defence (DND) says the MPCC has no jurisdiction to look into detainee transfers. The MPCC alerts the government that it will have to hold public hearings if DND refuses to cooperate.
March 19, 2007: Minister O’Connor apologizes to House of Commons when he says he was wrong about the Red Cross’ role in monitoring Canadian detainees. Opposition parties call for his resignation.
April 23, 2007: The Globe and Mail reports that 30 transferred Canadian detainees were “beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked and subjected to electric shocks during interrogations.”
Mr. Colvin said that following the appearance of newspaper reports, David Mulroney, the Prime Minister’s advisor on Afghanistan, instructs Mr. Colvin to keep quiet and refrain from putting torture allegations on paper.
A Toronto Star report from November 22, 2009 says that as soon as the detainee abuse scandal erupted in 2007, NATO officials were “scripted and fed” precise wording by PM Harper’s office to deny the reports.
April 24, 2007: PM Harper refuses to dismiss Minister O’Connor, despite pressure from opposition parties, and tells the House of Commons, “We are not at the moment told of the problems that have been reported in the papers today. Obviously, if there are such problems, we will act.”
Mr. Colvin begins to send reports recommending a new transfer arrangement.
April 25, 2007: The Globe and Mail reports that government was informed “extra judicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are all too common” for detainees, but had censored this information in documents released to the media.
Caving in to mounting political pressure, the Harper government announces a new detainee arrangement that provides Canadian government officials with full access to Afghan jails for monitoring.
April 27, 2007: Canadian official Linda Garwood-Filbert tells CTV News and the Globe and Mail, "There hasn't been any significant work done with the prisons... It's out of sight, out of mind. We're just happy they went to jail." Regarding allegations of torture at Afghan prisons, she says, "I'm not naive enough to think those circumstances don't happen."
April 29, 2007: On CTV’s Question Period, Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan says, “We have yet to see one specific allegation of torture... We'd be happy to have it investigated and chased down, but the Liberals continue to repeat the baseless accusations made by those who wish to undermine our forces there.”
May 3, 2007: The new transfer agreement is signed allowing Canada to visit Afghan prisons. Colvin says little monitoring occurs due to lack of resources, which means “detainees continued to be tortured after they were transferred.” He also says “the paper trail on detainees was reduced” and “reports on detainees began sometimes to be censored with crucial information removed.”
June-July, 2007: Mr. Colvin sends four more memos on the treatment of detainees.
August 14 2007: Peter MacKay replaces Gordon O’Connor as defence minister.
September 22 2007: The Globe and Mail reports that Canada can’t account for at least 50 transferred detainees. Canadian officials blame shoddy Afghan record keeping.
October 2007: Mr. Colvin leaves Afghanistan, after 17 memos over a 17 month period documenting instances of torture.
A dedicated monitor is finally sent to Kandahar.
November 5, 2007: The Gosselin report confirms a case of torture. Canadian forces halt detainee transfers a day later, 17 months after first becoming aware of the high risk of torture.
November 19, 2007: PM Harper confirms for the first time to CBC News that the government has learned of evidence of abuse, and that it is being investigated.
January 21, 2008: Canadian official Kerry Buck says during testimony, “It is not our role to determine the credibility of the allegations, to determine the veracity of the allegations. We don’t investigate those allegations.”
January 23 2008: The stoppage of transfers is reported to the public for the first time. Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier did not reveal the new policy when asked about it in the House of Commons a week after the new policy was put in place.
January 24, 2008: The Prime Minister’s spokesperson says Canadian Forces did not tell government transfers had been suspended; she retracts her comments a day later.
March 14, 2008: The House of Commons votes to extend the Afghanistan mission by two years.
April 2009: The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission reports that of 400 Afghan prisoners interviewed, 98.5 percent of them were tortured, 243 of whom were harmed in 2006-2007.
Mr. Colvin is subpoenaed to appear before the MPCC.
March 30, 2009: The Harper government tries to indefinitely delay the MPCC hearings. A month later, their application is denied by a federal court.
July 28, 2009: Federal government lawyers threaten witnesses not to participate in the MPCC hearings.
October 14, 2009: The MPCC shuts down hearings after federal government blocks witness testimony and fails to produce documents.
Mr. Colvin states in an affidavit to the MPCC that he repeatedly sounded alarms to his superiors and the military about handing captives over to Afghan control, almost a full year before the government public claimed it had no credible reports of detainee abuse.
October 15, 2009: Minister Mackay denies having seen reports sent to his office in either his capacity as minister of National Defence or previously as minister of Foreign Affairs.
November 18, 2009: Mr. Colvin testifies at the House of Commons Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan.
November 19, 2009: Opposition parties call for a public inquiry into detainee torture. Minister MacKay calls Mr. Colvin’s testimony “hearsay” and Taliban lies.
November 24, 2009: PM Harper refuses to release Mr. Colvin’s memos to the public.
November 27, 2009: Despite his earlier comments about Mr. Colvin’s testimony, Minister MacKay now admits government knew of concerns early in 2006, maintaining that the transfer agreement was not changed only because reports of abuse became public: “The decision to change the transfer arrangement would have been as a result of a lot of sources of information including those from Mr. (David) Mulroney, those from other individuals on the ground, Elyssa Goldberg, those who were involved in the actual PRT, those who went to Afghan prisons to observe the situation... That began almost immediately after we took office... Obviously there were concerns about the state of prisons... There were concerns about allegations. There were concerns about information found in reports... We acted on those concerns over two and a half years ago.”