Article content continued

I alerted the commissioner that Sajjan’s pivotal intelligence role in Kandahar made him a potentially valuable commission witness on the crucial issue of what was known about the use of torture by Afghan partner institutions. It was thus, I argued, a conflict of interest for Sajjan to be the one to reject such a commission.

In my view, it was a conflict of interest for Sajjan to be the one to reject a commission of inquiry into Canada’s practices relating to the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan.

War historian Sean Maloney writes in his 2011 book, Fighting for Afghanistan, that Sajjan “developed rapport with all the security ‘players’ in Kandahar.” Maloney details how Sajjan was a key conduit for intelligence flows from partner institutions—including the National Directorate of Security (NDS)—due to Sajjan’s role within a body called the Joint Coordination Committee. NDS is an Afghan agency widely known to engage in systematic torture of its prisoners. Yet, according to a 2015 Rideau Institute report, Canada systematically transferred detainees to NDS between 2006 and 2011, after the Canadian and Afghanistan governments signed a transfer agreement in late 2005.

In February 2017, the commissioner wrote to me to say: “I raised directly with Mr. Sajjan your allegation that… he could reasonably be expected to have knowledge relevant to what others may have known about the fate that awaited any transferred detainees.” How did Sajjan reply to the commissioner? “Mr. Sajjan informed me,” Dawson continues, “that he was deployed as a reservist to Afghanistan where he was responsible for capacity building with local police forces. At no time was he involved in the transfer of Afghan detainees, nor did he have any knowledge relating to the matter.” Dawson then concluded: “Mr. Sajjan’s potential to be a witness at a possible commission of inquiry … remains too remote and too speculative.”