Canada: Military unaware of Afghan torture

TORONTO (AP)  Canada released declassified documents Wednesday that it said show that its soldiers did not know about the purported torture of prisoners by Afghan authorities.

Canada said in a statement that "no credible allegations against Canadian Armed Forces members or Canadian officials were found."

Foreign Minister John Baird said the documents show that Canada is committed to upholding its international obligations involving the handling and transfer of Taliban prisoners and that they were well treated by the Afghan officials to whom they were transferred.

Baird said Canadian soldiers acted legally.

"The allegations of improper conduct are unfounded and critics' accusations of Canadian complicity with torture or even war crimes are simply not true," Baird said.

A senior Canadian diplomat alleged in 2009 that government and military officials ignored evidence that prisoners handed over to Afghanistan's intelligence service in 2006 and 2007 were tortured.

Richard Colvin spent 18 months in Afghanistan as senior diplomat during that time. He said that Canadian officials knew detainees faced a high risk of torture for a year and a half but continued to order military police to hand over detainees to the Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government released 4,000 of some 40,000 classified pages on the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan. Baird said that brings the matter to a close.

Two former Supreme Court justices, a former British Columbia judge, and an ad-hoc committee of Parliament members combed through the massive file to determine what can be released without endangering national security.

Canada has about 2,800 soldiers in the volatile southern Afghan province of Kandahar on a combat mission that is due to end this year. More than 900 soldiers are to remain in a different Afghan province in a training role.

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