Heavily Censored Afghan Documents Raise New Questions About Transfers

[tekisui]

Source: The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — Newly released documents show a Canadian soldier alleges that Afghan authorities routinely executed detainees his unit handed over to them.

The stack of records disclosed Thursday by the federal government also says detainees at a Kandahar prison told Foreign Affairs and Corrections Canada officials on a site tour that they had been tortured.

And they reveal that a Canadian military policewoman stationed at the Kandahar base was assaulted in early 2008 upon getting out of the shower and told to mind her own business.

The opposition parties have been pressing for full access to documents about the detainee transfers, saying they will help explain what politicians and military commanders knew about the simmering affair.

The government tabled more than 2,500 pages on the issue Thursday, but the heavily censored material was greeted with scorn from the opposition.

Questions have lingered since diplomat-whistleblower Richard Colvin's allegations last year that most prisoners Canada transferred to Afghan custody were subsequently tortured.

The accusation that detainees were killed by Afghan army or police officers comes from a Canadian soldier with the Royal Canadian Regiment who served in the Panjawi District. Upon returning to Canada, he told a military doctor treating him for stress about his concerns.

"After they handed over the detainee, the local authority would walk the detainee out of range and the detainee would be shot," says a 2008 report on the soldier's claims. "This occurred on more than one occasion."

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