‘It was my No. 1 priority, but my bosses had other priorities, too’

As the Military Police Complaints Commission hearings continue, perhaps as many questions are raised as are answered.

Former diplomat Nicholas Gosselin visited Afghan detention facilities at least 38 times, but conducted only a handful of interviews with prisoners in the months after a bombshell allegation that a Canadian-captured detainee had been beaten with electrical cables. The revelation stunned both the inquiry chair and the human-rights group that prompted the continuing torture inquiry.

Gosselin told a Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry Tuesday that there often wasn’t time to get in to a question-and-answer session with inmates of either the Afghan intelligence jail, or the notorious Sarpoza prison.

“It wasn’t that there wasn’t a will,” said Gosselin, whose job at the Kandahar provincial reconstruction base included monitoring prisoners. “It was my No. 1 priority, but my bosses had other priorities, too.”