Afghanistan

Corruption Suspected in Airlift of Billions in Cash From Kabul

Topics: 
Corruption, Afghanistan
Rating: 
0

Matthew Rosenberg – June 25, 2010

KABUL—More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad.

The cash—packed into suitcases, piled onto pallets and loaded into airplanes—is declared and legal to move. But U.S. and Afghan officials say they are targeting the flows in major anticorruption and drug trafficking investigations because of their size relative to Afghanistan's small economy and the murkiness of their origins.

Hail to the whistleblowers

Topics: 
Wikileaks, Afghanistan
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Whistleblowers like those at WikiLeaks make huge sacrifices and are a vital last resort to check the powers of government

James Denselow – June 23, 2010

James Madison (drafter of the US first amendment) once wrote that "government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both". This is certainly true of Afghanistan, where the US-led coalition has been able to avoid a true audit of the impact of its presence via tight control of the media combined with manipulated patriotism.

To avoid greater tragedy in Afghanistan we may have to rely on a new generation of whistleblowers who are making huge personal sacrifices to challenge the official narrative.

Afghan document deal hides the truth

Topics: 
Richard Colvin, Afghanistan
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Secrecy – and Conservatives – win on prisoner abuse agreement

James Travers – June 17, 2010

Speaking truth to power takes more courage than most civil servants can muster. Diplomat Richard Colvin found that courage and is now discovering another durable reality: Politicians are afraid to listen to what Canadians don’t want to hear.

This week’s agreement allowing limited review of Afghanistan prisoner abuse documents is a triumph of expediency and secrecy over discipline and transparency. Chances are between slim and none that the country will ever be certain about what Stephen Harper and his ministers knew about what Afghans were doing to Afghans first captured by Canadians.

Professors want probe of detainee case lawyer

Topics: 
Justice Department, Richard Colvin, Afghanistan, Audio
Rating: 
5
Alain Prefontaine
Alain Préfontaine

CBC News – May 14, 2010

A group of professors is urging Ontario's law society to investigate allegations that the federal government's lead counsel at hearings into the handling of Afghan detainees is in a conflict of interest.

The allegations refer to Alain Préfontaine, the senior counsel and director general in the Department of Justice.

"At this writing, Mr. Préfontaine is making ongoing, almost weekly appearances before the [Military Police Complaints Commission], and the conduct complained of is profoundly corrosive to the administration of justice," the five professors write in a letter to the Law Society of Upper Canada.

Afghan secret police chief fired over torture of detainee, top soldier testifies

Topics: 
Richard Colvin, Afghanistan
Rating: 
5

Juliet O'Neill and Mike De Souza – May 11, 2010

OTTAWA - The firing of the "head honcho" of the Afghan secret police at a prison in Kandahar confirmed the allegations of torture that a Canadian-transferred detainee made on Nov. 5, 2007, to Foreign Affairs monitors, Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche testified Tuesday.

Laroche, then commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, said the dismissal and transfer to Kabul of the head of the National Directorate of Security at the unnamed detention facility after an internal investigation "was probably due to the fact that the allegations were founded or at least partially founded."

Federal lawyer may have broken conduct rules: MP

Topics: 
Justice Department, Richard Colvin, Afghanistan
Rating: 
5

James Cudmore, CBC News – April 21, 2010

The federal government's lead counsel at hearings into the handling of Afghan detainees is alleged to have broken the rules that govern lawyers in Ontario.

Alain Prefontaine should be investigated by Ontario's law society for an apparent conflict of interest, says lawyer and Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh.

Was Afghan torture a deliberate tool for Canada?

Topics: 
Richard Colvin, Afghanistan
Rating: 
5

Thomas Walkom – April 17, 2009

The most stunning news out of Ottawa this week has nothing to do with embattled MP Helena Guergis. Rather, it is the testimony of former army translator Ahmadshah Malgarai alleging that Canadian intelligence officers in Afghanistan deliberately sent recalcitrant prisoners to be interrogated under torture by that country’s secret police.

Richard Colvin's Catch-22

Topics: 
Justice Department, Richard Colvin, Afghanistan
Rating: 
5

Steven Chase – April 14, 2010

Franz Kafka would have been proud to have penned an episode from Tuesday's Afghan detainee hearings where the government sought to undermine testimony from one of its own civil servants.

The catch, for the civil servant, is he can't talk about information the government has censored. Even if it could vindicate him.

Military vows to probe ‘grave’ detainee accusations

Topics: 
Richard Colvin, Afghanistan
Rating: 
5

In troubling testimony, military employee says Canadian soldiers deliberately transferred Afghan prisoners to torture

Steven Chase – April 14, 2010

An Afghan-Canadian who served as an interpreter for Canada’s military has breathed new life into the detainee controversy with troubling allegations that this country’s soldiers deliberately transferred prisoners to torture.

Ahmadshah Malgarai also told a Commons committee yesterday that he came across evidence troops killed an innocent Afghan teen in 2007 and then tried to cover it up.

The case of the incurious investigator

Topics: 
Richard Colvin, Afghanistan
Rating: 
0

Editorial – April 13, 2010

First, a military investigator who did not want to know anything. Next, a diplomat who wanted to know everything. The contrast between the two Canadian government officials at the Afghanistan detainee hearings in Ottawa this week goes to the heart of the issue. The torture issue is all about the Canadian government’s willful blindness, an incuriosity that strains belief.

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