I have not read Hillier's book but I will once the library has it available.
Interestingly I have read Hillier's response to the memos about the risk of torture and the torture of people handed over to the Afghani prison authorities. He appears initially to state that he was too busy fighting a war! He pleads ignorant like the rest of them.
Tory defence ministers plead ignorance on Afghan torture
OTTAWA: Two Conservative defence ministers -- one former and one current --say they did not know about more than one dozen internal reports warning that Canadian soldiers were handing Afghan captives to local authorities with the possibility that they faced torture.
Gordon O�Connor and Peter MacKay say they never heard about reports by Richard Colvin, a former senior diplomat who says he wrote and widely distributed his reports to top bureaucrats at Foreign Affairs and National Defence, as well as the senior military chain of command, beginning in May 2006, soon after he arrived in Afghanistan.
In his first of 19 reports, some formal and some not, he warned of "serious, imminent and alarming" concerns that detainees were being mistreated upon surrender to Afghan jails.
Mr. O�Connor, who was defence minister through most of Mr. Colvin�s posting in Afghanistan, repeatedly maintained through the spring of 2007 -- almost a full year later -- that he knew nothing about Afghan captives being maltreated after they were handed over by Canadian soldiers.
He was replaced in August 2007 by Mr. MacKay, who had been foreign affairs minister since the Conservatives came to power in January 2006.
Mr. O�Connor said yesterday that he firmly stands by his previous statements, which have been called into question after Mr. Colvin, in an affidavit released this week, revealed the existence of his reports, which he said he copied at the time to numerous senior officials in Ottawa and Afghanistan, including top military brass.
"I always tell the truth and I said it in Parliament, I said it in committees and I�ll say it today: I was never made aware of any allegations of prisoner abuse, period," Mr. O�Connor said in an interview with Global TV. "Nobody came to me and said, �Minister, there are prisoners being mistreated.� Nobody."
Mr. O�Connor had no explanation for why he might have been left out of the loop about the reports. "Maybe they were dealt with at the lower levels and found not to be credible," he said.
Mr. Colvin was posted in Afghanistan for 17 months in various senior roles from late April 2006 to early October 2007. At one point, he was in charge of all policy files relevant to Canada. He is now the deputy head of intelligence at the Canadian embassy in Washington.
The Conservative government is seeking to block Mr. Colvin and 21 others from testifying before the Military Police Complaints Commission, which is holding a public inquiry into whether military police knew, or had the means of knowing, that their captives would be abused or tortured under Afghan control.
Mr. Colvin sent an affidavit to the commission, which released it on Wednesday after the government screened it for national security purposes.
There is no evidence in Mr. Colvin�s affidavit that senior politicians in Ottawa knew of his reports, some of which were copied to dozens of people. Mr. MacKay, who as former foreign minister was Mr. Colvin�s boss through most of his stint in Afghanistan, also maintained yesterday he knew nothing of Mr. Colvin�s warnings.
"Absolutely not," Mr. Mac-Kay told Global TV in Moncton, N.B. "The first time I heard Mr. Colvin�s name was in regard to the Military Police Complaints Commission."
Both the NDP and the Liberals said yesterday that all-party House of Commons committees should examine the complaints of prisoner abuse.
The commission hearings were put on hold this week indefinitely. Chairman Peter Tinsley blamed the adjournment on the government�s failure to provide the relevant documents to help implicated military personnel mount their defence. The commission is also challenging a Federal Court ruling last month that narrowed the inquiry�s mandate to examining the role of military police, rather than delving into broader government policy.
more to follow......
"A little more is seeping out about who shared and read what with respect to memos a Canadian diplomat says he sent up the line alleging torture of detainees by Afghan authorities after being handed over by Canadians.
We’ve already heard anonymous sources saying these reports had reached then-Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier. While some media outlets awaited Hillier’s comments in response to this, it appears the Globe & Mail’s John Ibbitson actually found the appropriate passage in Hillier’s new book, “A Soldier First: Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War” – this, from the Globe:
By Spring 2006, as military operations in Kandahar province expanded, Canadian troops started taking an increasing number of prisoners. As previously agreed, the prisoners were transferred into Afghan custody. In Spring 2007, The Globe and Mail reported on allegations of abuse of detainees in Afghan prisons. Mr. Hillier acknowledged that was to be expected.
“Their judicial and prison systems were still somewhat nascent, and there was always some risk that abuse could occur,” he wrote.
The military decided to make frequent unannounced visits to Afghan prisons to monitor conditions, but the first visit raised sufficient alarms that “we lost confidence that basic, responsible measures were in place to ensure the humane treatment of prisoners.”
The book does not say when the first visit took place or how long the time lag was until the transfers were stopped in December, 2007. The Globe and Mail has reported that the first inspection visit was in May, 2007. Transfers resumed in early January, 2008.
Throughout the process, Mr. Hillier writes, the federal government was kept fully informed of the military’s handling of prisoners….
Here’s what the PM had to say last week on this, according to CBC.ca:
Speaking in Toronto, where he was making a funding announcement, Harper said he didn’t see the reports “at the time.”
Meanwhile, yesterday, in the House of Commons, Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay said neither he nor the deputy minister received these reports. Now, if the Globe & Mail quoted him correctly speaking outside the House, the Minister also had this to say:
“There are hundreds if not thousands of documents, reporters, memos, advice that come through all departments,” Mr. MacKay told reporters outside the House of Commons. “The fact that one report or a series of reports weren’t read by a minister or a deputy minister shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.“
Compare this to what he said in the House on 19 Oct 09:
We receive hundreds, if not thousands, of reports annually through the Department of National Defence, as well as the Department of Foreign Affairs. That is why it did not make it to my desk …. I intend to hear from the Department of Defence, as well as foreign affairs, as to where this report stopped, because it did not make it to the deputy minister or my desk.
Am I the only one seeing a difference between “we didn’t GET the reports” and “we didn’t READ the reports”?
And the latest messaging? From the Minister in Tuesday’s Question Period Hansard here and here:
Two and a half years ago, on allegations that were circulating at the time, on thousands of reports that were circulating at the time, we acted to improve the transfer agreement that was left in place by the previous government. We then went about mentoring prison officials, went about mentoring police and went about improving the overall security situation …. We are co-operating with ongoing investigations. We are not pre-empting or prejudging those investigations. We are acting within the legislation, within the decisions that have been handed down by the Federal Court …. We are co-operating with investigations that are ongoing about what Afghans did to Afghans …. We will continue to work with officials to improve the human rights situation in Afghanistan.
UPDATE (1): The new title replaces the old one:
Hillier: I Told Prime Minister’s Office About Torture Allegations"
