Defence Minister Peter MacKay in the House of Commons yesterday, courtesy of Aaron Wherry:
Mr. Speaker, it has been stated here a number of times that there has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian Forces.
And thus MacKay sets the standard and all it takes is a single, solitary case to prove him wrong. From the Globe and Mail on Jan. 22, 2008 courtesy of Impolitical:
In one harrowing account, an Afghan turned over by Canadian soldiers told of being beaten unconscious and tortured in the secret police prison in Kandahar. He showed Canadian diplomats fresh welts and then backed up his story by revealing where the electrical cable and the rubber hose that had been used on him were hidden.
"Under the chair we found a large piece of braided electrical cable as well as a rubber hose," reads the subsequent diplomatic cable marked "secret" and distributed to some of the most senior officials in the Canadian government and officers in the Canadian military.
Are we to believe that this prisoner not only harmed himself but managed to smuggle this evidence into the prison and plant it while in custody? Or should we consider the possibility that, to be generous, our Minister of Defence doesn't have his facts straight?
Update:
Or you could just read Impolitical herself, who wrote essentially the same post but with additional content yesterday afternoon. Can I get away with saying "great minds think alike?"
"Are we to believe that this prisoner not only harmed himself but managed to smuggle this evidence into the prison and plant it while in custody?"
Yup. At least that was what Jim Abbott said to Colvin at the committee meeting - The torture tools could have been put there to fool you or perhaps it was self-abuse - as Gallant bobbed her head up and down enthusiastically in agreement.
The government's case is going to be that their own record-keeping was so bad - confirmed by Colvin - that it will not be possible to track any single prisoner properly from CAF to Afghan prisons. That's going to be our defence - that our record-keeping is on a par with that of Afghanistan.
Yes, it's deja vu all over again. Here's my blog post from January 31, 2008.
MacKay Knew of Abuse, Lied to Parliament
Whooee! I was just readin' a story in the Globe where Petey MacKay sez he was in the loop on the cessation of detainees transfers from the get-go. He was apprised of the incontrovertible evidence and the change of policy on November 6.
But on November 22, Peter MacKay responded in the House to a question from Denis Coderre about handing over juvenile detainees. Here's what MacKay said two weeks after proof of torture had been found and the transfers had been stopped.
There it is. Peter MacKay is on record lying to Parliament. There was at least one proven allegation, one solitary example. He knew about it and he knew that it had triggered a change in policy. He simply lied and then went on to embellish the lie with a personal attack on Coderre.
MacKay must be called to account for this lie.
....
I think the parlez-vou's have a phrase for this sorta stuff: "Plus ça change..."
JB:
I edited your comment to make it clear how much of it was quoted from Hansard. The blockquote tags misbehave in comments sometimes when the quoted material runs to several paragraphs. I always add paragraph tags when I do that.
Thx. The original post - MacKay Knew of Abuse, Lied to Parliament - also has some links that I didn't copy here.