Another scandal for Stephen Harper

No big blue cardboard cheques in sight.

This one is more serious. It’s about torture, and Canada is involved.

Lots of documents as evidence, and a brave whistleblower, Richard Colvin, spilling the beans to a parliamentary committee.

It goes back to the 18 months between April 2006 and October 2007 soon after the Harper government came to power.

Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan didn’t do any torture. They handed over Taliban suspects they had captured to the Afghan police and Sarpoza jail guards who took care of things for them.

Under international law, handing over prisoners for torture is a war crime. So who gave the orders to the soldiers? Who set the hand-over policies in Ottawa? It would take a full public inquiry to find out.

The Canadians were great soldiers, sweeping up six times as many prisoners as did the British military, and 20 times as many as did the Dutch.

But the Canadians would wait several days or even weeks before supplying names of prisoners to the Red Cross as required by international law.

The grateful Afghan jail guards had plenty of time to do what they wanted to make suspects talk – electric shocks, electric cable beatings, sleep deprivation and sexual abuse.

Another Abu Ghraib. And who supplied the prisoners? That’s why the torture rap is serious.

The shocking testimony came from our former No. 2 in Afghanistan at the time, career diplomat Richard Colvin. He kept writing reports to higher ups in Ottawa but nobody would listen.

They wouldn’t answer his reports, wouldn’t take his telephone calls. When he persisted they told him to write nothing on paper. If he had complaints, phone them in. And when he persisted still more, they transferred him to our embassy in Washington, and still never acknowledged his reports on the torture.

Colvin had flooded Ottawa with 16 documented reports in 18 months. They went to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s national advisor on security Margaret Bloodworth, to the Chief of the Defence Staff, Rick Hillier, to Canadian commander in Afghanistan, Lieut.-General Michel Gauthier; to David Mulroney, our No. 1 man in Afghanistan at the time, today Canadian ambassador in China – in all 76 reports e-mailed to the most powerful people in the Canadian government.

Today none of them can remember seeing or reading any of the e-mails. Memory loss is such a sad thing.

Colvin came back to Ottawa recently to testify before a Military Police Public Complaints Commission inquiry into the torture, but the Harper government put a stop to that by threatening to jail Colvin for five years if he testified. They said it might endanger national security.

More likely it would endanger Harper government security.

Faced with the loss of his top witness, Inquiry Commission Chair Peter Tinsley suspended his inquiry indefinitely. It appeared the Harper had won. That was before Colvin’s testimony before the parliamentary committee this week.

The Harper government fought back. There was no torture, no inquiry is needed and it sent out Defence Minister Peter MacKay to discredit Colvin.

MacKay said that since Colvin had not seen any torture with his own eyes there had been no torture.

Perhaps the jail guards forgot to invite witnesses.

MacKay called Colvin “a dupe” of the Taliban. He said Colvin had “hearsay” torture stories.

It is rare for a cabinet minister to call a senior public servant “a dupe” of the enemy. MacKay has no answer as to why, if Colvin was such a “dupe” foreign affairs appointed him our chief of intelligence in Washington.

So an enemy “dupe” is handling our intelligence in Washington? Great appointment, Steve!

All week the government searched in vain for public servants to discredit Colvin. It found none.

The story made it around the world – the Times of London, Le Monde, La Romandie, the BBC and the New York Times. “Canada – torture scandal!”

The sub-text : “Not so clean, these Boy Scout Canadians.”

It should be interesting when Harper goes to China in two weeks to lecture the Chinese on their abhorrent human rights record.

Next week the government strategy is expected to change.

Instead of attacking Colvin, the government is expected to say that it knew about “some” torture, (but not from Colvin) but that it acted quickly to stop it.

Trouble is on Thursday a second torture report came out, from Nicolas Gauthier, a Canadian who investigated torture in Sarpoza prison. He has conversations with jailhouse victims backing up the Colvin reports.

Will the government try to discredit Gauthier as well? And who is next?

Harper ministers insist no public inquiry is needed. No, none at all!

Yeah, and I believe in Santa Claus.