© Colin Perkel/Canadian Press
The stack of records released Thursday by the federal government also said 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 and told to mind her own business.
Questions have lingered since diplomat-whistleblower Richard Colvin's allegations last year that most prisoners Canada transferred to Afghan custody were subsequently tortured.
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.
Heavily censored
The government tabled more than 2,500 pages on the issue Thursday, but the heavily censored material was greeted with scorn by the opposition.
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."
The doctor told investigators about his patient's allegations since they involved possible criminal activity. He added that those who return from Afghanistan with stress-related conditions sometimes exaggerate, and that the killings may never have happened.
"However, the condition that he does have would not give him any reason to lie. Therefore, he may be telling the truth," the report said.
'Exhaustive inspection'
An April 2007 report by a Foreign Affairs official who joined a Correctional Service of Canada staffer on an "exhaustive inspection" of the notorious National Directorate of Security facility in Kandahar City also cites claims of abuse.
Amnesty International has complained that military police failed to probe officers who directed the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities despite knowing they might be tortured.
A February 2008 memo prepared at National Defence Headquarters by Capt. S.M. Moore noted "significant shortcomings and areas for concern with regard to the conduct of [military police] operations in Afghanistan." Many of the problems "are systemic" and result from a lack of oversight, it said.
The memo notes a survey conducted "in theatre revealed that soldiers stated they had witnessed the abuse of detainees" - yet the information was not immediately passed on to military police.
It adds that on Feb. 15, 2008, two unknown individuals approached a female military police member when she exited the shower, grabbed her arms, pushed her against the shower wall and told her: "MPs mind your own business."
Other documents suggest many of the military police assigned to Afghanistan lacked basic soldiering skills. The material was tabled in the House of Commons without translations, in no particular order, and with deletions on nearly every page.
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