Not a word about US prisons in Afghanistan! Of course Canadians too have been accused of mistreating prisoners. There is no mention of the Iacobucci Inquiry as a positive step in dealing with issues of torture.
Canada shouldn’t risk torture of Afghan prisoners, panel hears
Maria Babbage, The Canadian Press
Published: Tuesday, April 24, 2007
TORONTO — Canadian soldiers shouldn’t hand over prisoners to Afghan authorities if there are reasonable grounds to believe they may be tortured, an international panel of jurists heard Tuesday.
Instead, the Canadian military should consider building its own detention facilities to ensure prisoners are treated humanely, University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach said, echoing the suggestion of other human rights experts in the wake of the Afghanistan torture allegations.
“Under the (Charter of Rights), it is clear that a Canadian police officer who goes abroad is subject to the Charter, so I would argue the Canadian Forces are really no different,” he told the panel, which is examining the impact of anti-terror policies on human rights around the globe.
It may be expensive, but it may be the price of complying with the Charter.”
Media reports suggest detainees have been kicked in the head, whipped with cables, or electrocuted by Afghan authorities after being turned over. The Conservative government dismissed the allegations Tuesday as the unsubstantiated ramblings of Taliban killers.
Roach was among a number of experts appearing at the first of two public hearings in Canada before an independent panel appointed by the International Commission of Jurists. The second session will be held in Ottawa on Wednesday.
The panel’s representatives for the Canadian hearings include Arthur Chaskalson and Robert Goldman.
Chaskalson is a former chief justice of South Africa and leading human rights lawyer who acted as counsel in the 1960s during the Rivonia trial, when Nelson Mandela and several members of the African National Congress were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Robert Goldman is an American professor and former UN expert on counter-terrorism and human rights.
They are expected to meet with Margaret Bloodworth, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s national security adviser, and other government officials Thursday before delivering some of their preliminary conclusions Friday.
Tuesday’s hearing took on a broad range of issues, from the country’s legal stance on torture to the use of special lawyers in the top-secret trials of terror suspects.
The panel also heard that while Canada has made “significant” mistakes trying to root out terrorism, recent steps by the government and courts have helped to restore some faith in the system.
The federal government’s apology and settlement with Maher Arar — who was deported to Syria and tortured but later cleared in a public inquiry — was a “huge psychological step forward,” said Ziyaad Mia of the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association.
The Arar case, and other court decisions striking down legal provisions that allow terror suspects to be detained and deported, shows that Canada has acknowledged some of the errors it has made in trying stop terrorism, he said.
“The tide seems to be turning,” Mia said. “I think there’s a sense that we’ve made some mistakes in haste.”
One of those encouraging signs came in February, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that federal security certificates — which allowed the federal government to deport non-citizens suspected of terrorist activity — were unconstitutional and gave Parliament a year to bring the law in line with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Mia also noted that two provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act — which gave police the ability to make preventative arrests without warrant and gave judges the power to compel witnesses to testify in terrorism cases — were allowed to expire in March.
“I would say the pendulum is shifting back from the extreme reaction of 9-11,” he said. “But there’s still a ways to go.”
© The Canadian Press 2007
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