BY JULIET O'NEILL, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE
OTTAWA — Canada's top military police investigator says he has never had grounds to suspect any Canadian commander ordered the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities knowing they would be tortured.
Lt.-Col. Gilles Sansterre stood his ground on that assertion during a day of grilling Monday at a public interest hearing by the Military Police Complaints Commission.
Even after he was given time to read a Federal Court ruling citing accounts of torture that detainees gave to Foreign Affairs monitors, Sansterre said he saw no evidence to suspect any commander of wrongdoing.
On the contrary, he pointed out the Federal Court ruling of Feb. 7, 2008, noted that the Canadian Forces suspended detainee transfers on Nov. 6, 2007, after Canadian personnel monitoring the condition of detainees produced a "credible allegation of mistreatment".
And he said: "It wouldn't be my job to second guess" Afghan authorities who were quoted in the court ruling saying allegations of mistreatment between May 3, 2007 and Nov. 5, 2007, were unsupported.
Sansterre, commander of the Canadian Forces National Investigative Service since August 2008, said he has never seen clear evidence in his work, in the court ruling, or in newspaper articles to justify suspicion or an investigation of a commander.
He said he also never read reports — although he agreed they "could be useful" — by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission or the U.S. State Department that said torture was practised by Afghan police and intelligence services.
"We would need some clear evidence — time, date, place, who the individuals were, and the assaults or abuse that are taking place," Sansterre said when asked how high the bar is set to trigger an investigation.
The commission is looking into allegations by Amnesty International and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association that Canadian military police "aided and abetted" torture of detainees by the Afghan National Police and National Directorate of Security by transferring or allowing the transfer of detainees despite a lack of effective safeguards against torture.
The transfers could violate international law such as the Geneva Conventions.
Sansterre testified that neither Corrections Canada officers nor RCMP officers mentoring their Afghan counterparts had ever brought evidence to him that would spark an investigation into transfers.
He testified that he would investigate if he had clear evidence and that he had never been told by anybody not to investigate.
Sansterre said that when he took the commander's position "the treatment of detainees was certainly a significant issue".
He signed off on eight inquiries into allegations of mistreatment of detainees under Operation Centipede that began under his predecessor.
In one case a detainee was returned to Canadian custody, in other cases there was no substantiation of allegations and in two others — accounts published in Globe and Mail — there was no followup.
Sansterre said it was his experience that journalists do not share their sources with police.
An example of an Operation Centipede investigation that did not pan out was a Canadian Forces member who told his doctor in Canada that detainees were being executed. Investigators found the man was never in a unit in Afghanistan that had anything to do with detainees.
In another case a Canadian Forces member thought a corpse in a ditch was a detainee he had seen, but no link was ever established.
Sansterre also dismissed reports that the National Investigation Service suffered from a lack of resources.
The Vancouver Sun
