The report into Canada’s handling of the abuse of Afghan prisoners doesn’t much deal with Afghan prisoners.
It is, however, a damning indictment of Ottawa’s cult of secrecy.
From the start the Military Police Complaints Commission, which produced Wednesday’s report, was precluded from investigating the broader question of whether higher-ups in the Canadian government knew that captured Afghan prisoners handed over to the country’s secret police were in danger of being tortured.
Its mandate was instead limited to determining whether eight senior and mid-level military police officers had reasonably followed the rules.
To no one’s surprise, the two-person commission found they had.
But the real story, which the 532-page report lays out in agonizing detail, is how official Ottawa conspired to prevent a public inquiry — and by extension the public — from finding out information that might embarrass the government and its top civil servants.
Citing what the commission calls bogus national security concerns, the government tried to derail the inquiry from its start in 2008. For 21 months, it simply refused to give the commission any of the documents it sought.
When the commission tried to call witnesses, the government used broad powers granted it under anti-terror laws to prevent them from testifying.
In an effort to grind the inquiry to a halt, the government challenged its jurisdiction in court. It even challenged the commission’s final report before it was written.
Judges ruled against the government. Yet it continued to stonewall.
In the end, the report says, the commission could never be sure whether it was getting the whole story.
That’s because the government, even when forced to provide documents, reserved to itself the right to decide which ones to hand over — and then to vet those for so-called national security reasons.
Government lawyers appearing before the commission had access to uncensored documents dealing with the treatment of Afghan prisoners. So did some witnesses.
Only the commissioners, whose job it was to judge, were kept in the dark. Their requests to listen to allegedly sensitive material in closed session were summarily refused.
The report cites one bizarre exchange between Richard Colvin, the diplomat who first blew the whistle on Afghan prisoner abuse, and a government lawyer.
The lawyer was trying to discredit something Colvin had written; the diplomat was responding. But since neither could specify what they were talking about without breaking the government’s national security gag order, the entire exchange was gibberish.
In their report, the commissioners call it “surreal.”
They conclude that the government was using its anti-terror laws “as much to delay the work of the commission as to protect truly sensitive information.”
Ottawa’s mandarins, the report says, were trying to “completely stymie a public inquiry.”
Many would like to pin the blame entirely on Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for this. And it’s true that Harper is no fan of open government.
It’s also true that his bully-boys did their bit, denigrating Colvin and suggesting that anyone worried about the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan was pro-Taliban.
But this report points out that the cult of secrecy is far more systemic, suggesting that it infects not just cabinet but the highest ranks of the civil service.
Indeed, this commission concludes that it was treated much like the 1994 inquiry set up to look into the torture by Canadian soldiers of a Somali youth. That inquiry too was stonewalled by government and shut down before it had finished its work.
It’s probably worth noting that the government in that instance was Liberal.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Walkom, Thomas
It is, however, a damning indictment of Ottawa’s cult of secrecy.
From the start the Military Police Complaints Commission, which produced Wednesday’s report, was precluded from investigating the broader question of whether higher-ups in the Canadian government knew that captured Afghan prisoners handed over to the country’s secret police were in danger of being tortured.
Its mandate was instead limited to determining whether eight senior and mid-level military police officers had reasonably followed the rules.
To no one’s surprise, the two-person commission found they had.
But the real story, which the 532-page report lays out in agonizing detail, is how official Ottawa conspired to prevent a public inquiry — and by extension the public — from finding out information that might embarrass the government and its top civil servants.
Citing what the commission calls bogus national security concerns, the government tried to derail the inquiry from its start in 2008. For 21 months, it simply refused to give the commission any of the documents it sought.
When the commission tried to call witnesses, the government used broad powers granted it under anti-terror laws to prevent them from testifying.
In an effort to grind the inquiry to a halt, the government challenged its jurisdiction in court. It even challenged the commission’s final report before it was written.
Judges ruled against the government. Yet it continued to stonewall.
In the end, the report says, the commission could never be sure whether it was getting the whole story.
That’s because the government, even when forced to provide documents, reserved to itself the right to decide which ones to hand over — and then to vet those for so-called national security reasons.
Government lawyers appearing before the commission had access to uncensored documents dealing with the treatment of Afghan prisoners. So did some witnesses.
Only the commissioners, whose job it was to judge, were kept in the dark. Their requests to listen to allegedly sensitive material in closed session were summarily refused.
The report cites one bizarre exchange between Richard Colvin, the diplomat who first blew the whistle on Afghan prisoner abuse, and a government lawyer.
The lawyer was trying to discredit something Colvin had written; the diplomat was responding. But since neither could specify what they were talking about without breaking the government’s national security gag order, the entire exchange was gibberish.
In their report, the commissioners call it “surreal.”
They conclude that the government was using its anti-terror laws “as much to delay the work of the commission as to protect truly sensitive information.”
Ottawa’s mandarins, the report says, were trying to “completely stymie a public inquiry.”
Many would like to pin the blame entirely on Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for this. And it’s true that Harper is no fan of open government.
It’s also true that his bully-boys did their bit, denigrating Colvin and suggesting that anyone worried about the torture of prisoners in Afghanistan was pro-Taliban.
But this report points out that the cult of secrecy is far more systemic, suggesting that it infects not just cabinet but the highest ranks of the civil service.
Indeed, this commission concludes that it was treated much like the 1994 inquiry set up to look into the torture by Canadian soldiers of a Somali youth. That inquiry too was stonewalled by government and shut down before it had finished its work.
It’s probably worth noting that the government in that instance was Liberal.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Walkom, Thomas
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