Ottawa

Secrecy and inconsistency

By Aaron Wherry

The Hill Times finds a relevant e-mail in last week’s pile of detainee documents.

Canadian Forces headquarters ordered Canadian Military Police in Kandahar to withhold information about detainees from the allied International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, an email among the 2,600 documents the government tabled in Parliament says…

According to [redacted] the situation has not/not improved,” the email says. “The Canadian [Military Police] Provost Marshal in Kandahar has told ISAF that he would be pleased to provide the information but that he has received explicit instructions from NDHQ not/not to do so. [Redacted] said this is very frustrating as ISAF has responsibilities on detainees that it is obliged to discharge.”

The email is equally important on another ground because the Military Police complaint it contains about orders to stay quiet over detainee information was redacted from another version of the same email that the government released last November. That was when the special Commons Committee on Afghanistan began hearing Colvin and other witnesses about Canadian actions during the war and allegations of torture.