"Extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial...

[BitWhys]

"Extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial...

are all too common,"

The Harper government knew from its own officials that prisoners held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of torture, abuse and extrajudicial killing, The Globe and Mail has learned.
...

Time for Steve to hang a civil servant out to day or folks will start to assume this little tidbit must have been rolled into another one of those PMO briefings that Steve never got around to reading. ukeright:

 

[Pangloss]

Why would Can. Dips. be so stupid as to first deny the existence of the report, and then to release a heavily redacted version?

The report could have been used to justify continued presence in Afg., squaring nicely with Harper's agenda, and we could have once again been seen as a human rights leader. . .

Beggars reason.

Pangloss

 

[BitWhys]

Why would Can. Dips. be so stupid as to first deny the existence of the report, and then to release a heavily redacted version?...

That's an excellent question that deserves consideration and might I suggest THIS is the point to consider...

Assuming they are experienced professional bureaucrats, they'd only be stupid if they didn't have the real reason for acting in this manner in writing somewhere.

 

[BitWhys]

...Assuming they are experienced professional bureaucrats, they'd only be stupid if they didn't have the real reason for acting in this manner in writing somewhere.

speaking of which...

Commissioner to probe censored report
Canadian Press
April 26, 2007 at 3:24 PM EDT

OTTAWA — The information commissioner is investigating why sweeping portions of a report on Afghan torture were blacked out before a copy of the document was handed over to the Globe and Mail.

The report by Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan, acquired by the Globe through an Access to Information request, was heavily censored, including references to the torture and mistreatment of enemy prisoners.

The Globe learned the full contents of the report after acquiring an uncensored copy from another source.

Information Commissioner Robert Marleau told the Commons committee on access to information, privacy and ethics on Thursday that he will be investigating the document.

Liberal members of the committee urged Mr. Marleau to examine what role, if any, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and his staff played in removing such critical segments of the report.

Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal say the torture of detainees by a third country is not a matter of national security and there are no legitimate reasons why such information should have been censored.

 

[Pangloss]

Thanks BW - what a puzzling story. . .

Pangloss

 

[wallyj]

I wonder what we did with the prisoners before Harper was elected. I guess for the first 4 years we put them up at the kabul hilton or something like that. It is wrong,but for the liberals to act all indignant and holy is quite hypocritical.

 

[BitWhys]

babysitting Kabul I wonder if we even took prisoners.