Afghan detainee oversight lacking: Laroche

Canada could have done more to stop the torture of Afghan detainees, a former Canadian commander in Kandahar has told a public hearing investigating allegations of detainee abuse.

Testifying before a public hearing by the Military Police Complaints Commission in Ottawa Tuesday, Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche said he felt Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs had failed to monitor the detainee transfer situation closely enough.

He also said he went so far as to suspend transfers out of concern detainees were being mistreated.

Laroche, who served as the commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan Roto 4 for 10 months beginning in 2007, said the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan's secret police force, had a sordid history and had repeatedly failed to treat people in accordance with the law.

And he said he "absolutely" agreed that Canada's responsibility for detainees did not cease just because they were handed off to Afghan authorities.

"Torture is torture," Laroche said in French.

Visits too far apart: brigadier-general

Laroche is one of 25 witnesses from the Canadian Forces and departments of defence and foreign affairs who are scheduled to testify before the commission, which launched a public interest hearing in May 2009 to investigate complaints about military conduct in Afghanistan.

The complaints suggest that certain members of Canada's military police failed to investigate senior officers in the chain of command who were responsible for directing the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities despite an alleged risk of torture.

Canadian foreign affairs officials were lax in their monitoring of detainees, Laroche suggested. Visits were too few and often too far apart; at one stage no officials visited detainees for an entire month.

When visits did resume, detainees made immediate and credible allegations of torture, he testified.

Despite assurances from a senior government official that conditions for detainees had changed, Laroche halted detainee transfers for three months, believing the situation was "not good enough."

Ideally, Canada would station a monitor permanently in the NDS prison to oversee treatment of detainees, said Laroche, acknowledging this would be too difficult and too dangerous to manage.