It's touching: Canada cares about its detainees that it entrusted to the U.S. Well, there are a lot of French people up there.
Canada has an obligation under the law of armed conflict to track the detainees its troops captured even after they are handed over to another country. However, U.S. officials have repeatedly refused to provide details on Guantanamo prisoners.
-- "Canada's JTF2 captives vanish at Guantanamo
U.S. stymies request for information about fate of Afghans caught in raids," The Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 14, 2005
::: Below the fold, more ABOOT those Canadian "quaint" values :::
A Canadian major -- a major, mind you! -- argues against using hoods and plastic cuffs. Lordy. We treat prisoners like that all the time!
Soldiers violating rules of war, major argues
DND insists use of hoods, plastic handcuffs is OK since Afghan mission is a peacekeeping operation
... Maj. J.M. Wilson, commandant of the Canadian Forces Service Prison and Detention Barracks in Edmonton, raised concerns about the way detainees were being handled after he saw television footage last January of Canadian troops with Afghan captives. Sandbag covers had been put over the heads of the prisoners and they had been restrained using plastic ties known as flex-cuffs.
"I thought we had long outgrown this method of handling prisoners, and arguably, such treatment is contrary to the Geneva Convention," the commandant wrote in an e-mail to National Defence headquarters in Ottawa.
"Moreover, the flex-cuffs are known to cut off the circulation, must be checked regularly, and should normally only be used when other more appropriate restraints are unavailable."
Maj. Wilson suggested changes might be in order. ... The Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 12, 2005
Boy, good thing our soldiers don't worry about that stuff:
This is the way we have to treat them: "[Moazzam Begg's] ordeal, beginning at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, included being shackled and dragged, having a 'suffocating hood'" placed on his head and being struck in the head several times. ... He also said he had witnessed two fatal beatings during interrogations by US officials in Afghanistan. "Detainees 'beaten to death'," Herald Sun, Jan. 30, 2005
How was Canada involved before the "vanishing" of those detainees?
Members of the Ottawa-based Joint Task Force 2 commando unit took at least three prisoners in January 2002 and another four during a raid several months later. But attempts by Canadian officers to find out what happened to the people appear to have been stymied by the U.S.
Canadian officials were told that once the captives were transferred to the American detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the U.S. would then decide whether to release them or to continue holding them. At least three of the captives taken in the January 2002 JTF2 raid ended up in Guantanamo Bay, according to records obtained by the Citizen under the Access to Information law. It is not known whether they are still being held there.
American officials also declined to provide further details to the Canadian Forces about what happened to four individuals JTF2 turned over to the U.S after the May 2002 raid.
The U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been steeped in controversy since its establishment. ...
In August 2003, a Canadian military intelligence officer reminded colleagues that Canada had an obligation under the law of armed conflict, as well as a national obligation, to track the detainees its troops captured even after they were handed over to another country. The Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 14, 2005
More stonewalling by the U.S.
However, right from the moment JTF2 turned over prisoners to the Americans in January 2002, Canadian military officials ran into problems finding out what happened to the captives. On Jan. 29, 2002, then-Commodore Jean-Yves Forcier wrote Canadian officers tried to check on the status and well-being of the prisoners. "U.S. authorities have maintained the position that they will not necessarily provide a status update concerning the detainees in question," he wrote.
The Ottawa Citizen, Feb. 14, 2005
The Band Taimore, Afghanistan raid still haunts the Canadians
... when Canadian officials tried to find out what happened to the four people turned over by JTF2 to the Americans after a May 2002 raid on the village of Band Taimore. ...
That joint U.S.-Canadian raid is still controversial because a 70-year-old man and a three-year-girl were killed in the operation. Canadian Forces officials stress JTF2 had left the compound before the killings took place. Canadian military reports indicate the elderly Afghan man was in U.S. custody and died after being struck in the head by a U.S. soldier's rifle butt. The girl's body was discovered after the raid at the bottom of the village well. It is believed she fell down the well in the confusion of the night-time special forces strike.
You can read more about the Band Tamoire raid at Time magazine:
When the men were being rounded up ... American soldiers bound and shoved the village women. That was an affront. Naibo, a middle-aged mother with cropped black hair, hands and feet scored from years of labor, says troops used plastic handcuffs to tie her hands and a torn turban to gag her. "I felt certain they were going to kill me," she says. "I was whispering the prayer before dying from the Koran." Other women made similar claims. A villager produces his daughter Maba, 7, to act out how she says she was bound. "If they touch our women again we must ask ourselves why are we alive," says Shir Mohammed Stad. "We will have no choice but to fight back."
But it is the death of a child the Americans never even saw that has really galvanized the village. When little Zarghunah woke shortly after midnight on May 24, the roars of choppers and their machine guns frightened her. The six-year-old ran ... [and] stumbled ... forgetting about the open well. Her father found her later, nearly 12 meters down the shaft, her body broken, wet and lifeless. Zarghunah loved red dresses and a grown farm dog she called Puppy. "She was the laughter of our house," says her mother.
About 600 people have lodged complaints about the incident. ...