A couple of weeks ago, when he was being pressed in the House of Commons about the government's efforts to block the MPCC inquiry into the handling of Afghan detainees, Peter MacKay decided to get nasty with the Bloc.
I wish they would spend just as much time standing up and protecting the interests of Canadian soldiers as they do for the vigour they seem to have for Taliban prisoners.
But aside from being a cheap shot, there's a problem with that statement: it assumes that the prisoners in question are Taliban and belong in custody. Bad assumption.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay has ordered officials to look into allegations that innocent Afghans may have been sent to jail due to botched translations by Canadian military interpreters.
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A former language and cultural adviser to the Canadian Forces said he witnessed at least two instances where innocent people were wrongly labelled as Taliban supporters because Afghan-Canadian interpreters did not understand what had been said.
NDP Leader Jack Layton said it's a troubling development and demanded to know what the Conservative government was going to do.
The possible abuse of Taliban prisoners was bad enough but now we have to entertain the possibility that innocent Afghans were detained by Canadian troops and transferred to torture in the mistaken belief that they were combatants. But that's why we have things like the Geneva Conventions, right? The special Commons committee awaits.
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