Canada fought giving Afghans charter rights

Ever since diplomat Richard Colvin testified on November 18 about Afghan detainees, opposition parties in Ottawa have focused enormous attention on what might have occurred after these prisoners came under the control of their Afghan captors. However, human-rights advocates say there has been little mention of what might have happened to Afghan detainees who were turned over to American captors between 2002 and 2005.

In a recent interview at the Georgia Straight office, the secretary general of Amnesty International’s Canadian section, Alex Neve, described Colvin’s testimony to a special parliamentary committee on Afghanistan as “remarkable, courageous, and quite explosive”, but added that it didn’t come as a surprise to him.

“Amnesty has been working on the issue of prisoner transfers in Afghanistan going back to 2002 when Canadian troops were first deployed in the country,” Neve said. “All along, first in the first five years when the practice was to hand prisoners over to U.S. forces in Afghanistan and since the beginning of 2006, [with] the new policy of handing them over to Afghan soldiers, we’ve known and have said to the Canadian government frequently, ”˜You’ve known and you are putting people at risk of grave human-rights violations, including torture.’ ”

Neve pointed out that Canadian soldiers were handing over captives to the U.S. while the Bush administration was coming under criticism for serious human-rights abuses at the Bagram Air Base and in other holding centres. Amnesty International told the Canadian government at the time that it was indirectly participating.

“When the government decided to change that policy [turning prisoners over to U.S. forces] with a policy of handing over to Afghan troops, we, of course, said to the government, ”˜You have just replaced one problem with another. This does not solve the problem and in many respects may even be making it worse. Again, you have to stop this policy and take a different approach.’ ”

In 2007, Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association appealed to the Federal Court of Canada to force the Canadian Forces to abide by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “The government fought that court case aggressively on every level,” Neve recalled. “Unfortunately, the court ruled that the charter of rights doesn’t apply to Canadian troops once they’ve left the country.”

Gail Davidson, cofounder of Lawyers Against the War, told the Straight by phone former U.S. president George W. Bush issued an edict that “enemy combatants” would not qualify for the protection of the Geneva Conventions. She said that Canadian officials knew that Afghan prisoners would be denied their human rights because Bush had created military commissions, “which didn’t even pretend to offer anything approaching a fair trial”.

“Depriving them of a fair trial is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, a crime under the Rome statute, a crime under the Canadian Geneva Conventions Act, and a crime under the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act,” she alleged.