Does O'Connor Know Where the Missing Detainees Are?

Bolstered by a few cagey smirks defence minister O'Connor, in response to questions by Jane Taber on Sunday's CTV Question Period about the fate of the missing Afghan detainees, responded with vague hints that he actually knows where they are. "Everybody can be found", O'Connor said, adding that we should "wait until the end of the investigation" to find out what happened to them. "We'll wait to see whether they're missing or not", O'Connor added.

What exactly does that mean? And if he knows where they are, why isn't he admitting that? It would seem to be incredibly naive to publicly imply that the DoD knows where the detainees are. If they actually escaped custody to run from their alleged crimes, they've now been told that this defence minister has a handle on their location. If they are in hiding because they were abused while being transferred and/or detained, they've now been told that their location is unsafe. Either way, they will most likely disappear once again which will only frustrate any investigation into their alleged abuse by Canadian forces.

The only other possibility is that the DoD has them in custody somewhere and isn't admitting it.

O'Connor is far too comfortable with how alleged suspects are treated once Canadian forces hand them over to the Afghanistan government.

"We're there in support of the Afghan government and when we get insurgents who break the law we hand them over to the authorities," O'Connor said.

First of all, it's not up to the Canadian forces to decide who has broken the law. That's the role of the courts.

"We want assurances that they're treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. I know according to the rules of law they don't have to be treated under the Geneva Convention, but we insist that they are. We are reliant on the International Red Cross to monitor this and now we're asking the human rights organization to also do it."

The problem with relying on the ICRC is that it is not required to make its findings public. That problem was highlighted when a confidential report about the treatment of detainees at Gitmo was leaked in 2004. So, while O'Connor says he can be assured by ICRC reports, we have no way of knowing about the real circumstances facing detainees who are handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian troops. O'Connor also added that he wasn't aware of any reports back from the ICRC about the detainees who have been handed over to Afghan authorities but he added that the ICRC is "quite pleased" with what the Canadian forces do. So, which is it, O'Connor? Is the ICRC reporting to you or isn't it?

Furthermore, O'Connor seems to be blissfully unaware of what the Canada-Afghanistan agreement says:

The Canada-Afghanistan Detainee Agreement does not provide adequate safeguards to ensure that detainees will not be tortured by Afghan forces. Canadian officials are not given the right to monitor detainees after they have been transferred. And although the agreement anticipates that detainees first held by Canada may be moved onwards to the custody of a third country it fails to provide safeguards to ensure they will not be subject to torture or even execution. The previous practice by Canadian Forces of transferring detainees directly to United States forces led to serious human rights violations in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The clear possibility of further transfer of detainees to United States custody remains under the current agreement...

In addition, Afghanistan's human rights organization was only brought into the picture last week when a secret agreement was signed after the news of the alleged abuse of the 3 detainees was splashed all over the front pages and following Amnesty International's call for a judicial review, although O'Connor said on Question Period that this agreement had been in the works since June 2006. That's hardly comforting. Why would it have taken so long to process such a straightforward agreement with a body concerned about human rights?

This just doesn't add up and Canadians, along with those in Afghanistan who are being tranferred over to the authorities there, deserve far more than this continual deception being fostered by this defence minister. I have a feeling that once these 4 investigations into what happened to these Afghan detainees wrap up, O'Connor won't come out smelling like the rose he seems to think he is.