Spectre of Somalia weighed on soldiers, detainee inquiry told

Bartamaha (Nairobi):-The painful Somalia scandal influenced how Canadians handled detainees in Afghanistan, focusing efforts on ensuring prisoners were free from abuse while in Canada’s custody rather than what happened after their transfer to Afghan jails, an inquiry heard today.

A soldier who served as a senior military policeman at Canadian Forces headquarters told the Military Police Complaints Commission he didn’t spend much time monitoring the treatment of detainees after they were passed to Afghan interrogators.

“Once we turned them over to Afghan authorities, unless there was a clear allegation, as far as I was concerned the military police responsibility ended,” Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Boot testified today.

The Military Police Complaints Commission is probing the transfer of detainees to Afghans in the face of allegations that Canada handed prisoners over to torture. The Geneva Conventions make it a war crime to transfer prisoners to torture and abuse.

Lt.-Col. Boot, who served as the provost marshal at Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) for one year ended July 2007, said staff at headquarters remembered what happened in Somalia.

In the early 1990s, a Canadian soldier, Master Corporal Clayton Matchee, beat to death a Somali teenager while in Canada’s custody. This embarrassing incident hurt the Forces for years and made them determined to avoid a repeat.

Military analysts believe this is why Canada refused to take long-term responsibility for the detention of suspects rounded up in the Afghanistan war. It also made the Forces anxious to prevent Canadian soldiers from abusing detainees for the several days they now keep captives before handing them over to Afghan jails.

“We understood the implications of detainees. Most of us at CEFCOM lived through the Somalia case,” Lt.-Col. Boot said. “Our focus was much more on: were [Canadian] soldiers abusing.”

He said he felt other Canadian government players – such as Correctional Services Canada – were responsible for oversight in Afghan detention and for watching for allegations of abuse.

“My military policeman had more than enough to do with their own responsibilities. We didn’t need to go looking for work.”

Lt.-Col. Boot said it would have been up to Correctional Services to find and report on allegations of maltreatment of detainees.

“Their job as I saw it was the professionalization of the [Afghan] prison system. If they had come back and said ‘Yikes, we have a problem’, we would have had to then re-look.”

Lt-Col. Boot said he was forced to devote more time to detainees after media reports of transfer-to-torture emerged in the late spring of 2007.

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Source:-theglobeandmail