OTTAWA - The Conservative government now says it was aware of "concerns about the state of prisons" in Afghanistan almost from the day it took office and eventually rewrote a prisoner transfer agreement as those concerns mounted.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay offered a dramatically different Tory narrative on the Afghan torture issue on Friday. This capped a week in which the government went from lampooning as Taliban dupes anyone who alleged prisoner abuse to claiming the government took such reports seriously from the start.
A 2005 prisoner transfer agreement with the Afghan government was eventually renegotiated in May 2007 under intense public scrutiny following explosive media revelations about torture in Afghan prisons.
Now, under the weight of evidence that many international organizations were sounding the alarm about treatment of Afghan prisoners, MacKay says his government knew of the problems and began to act shortly after taking office in January 2006.
"The decision to change the transfer arrangement would have been as a result of a lot of sources of information including those from Mr. (David) Mulroney, those from other individuals on the ground, Elissa Goldberg, those who were involved in the actual PRT, those who went to Afghan prisons to observe the situation," the minister said outside the Commons.
"That began almost immediately after we took office . . . . Obviously there were concerns about the state of prisons."
The detainee issue dominated Parliament this week.
Former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier, retired general Michel Gauthier and Maj.-Gen. David Fraser appeared at a special committee on the Afghan mission, where they emphatically shot down earlier testimony from diplomat Richard Colvin that the government had received numerous warnings of prisoner abuse in 2006.
Gauthier testified that literally "hundreds" of people in official Ottawa have now seen classified memos and that nothing in them suggested acts of torture were taking place.
Subsequent testimony from Mulroney, Canada's current ambassador to China who headed the Privy Council's Afghanistan task force, appeared to contradict Gauthier.
"The fact that there were allegations of mistreatment in Afghan prisons was known to us," Mulroney told the committee on Thursday.
However, since Canada at the time had no way of tracking any detainees it handed over, Mulroney was able to testify that "there was no mention specifically of Canadian-transferred prisoners" being abused.
MacKay further massaged the Conservative message on Friday.
"Obviously there were concerns about the state of prisons,"he said. "There were concerns about allegations. There were concerns about information found in reports. There were concerns.
"We acted on those concerns over two and a half years ago."
While the government had previously stated that a specific abuse allegation in the spring of 2007 prompted it to act, MacKay now suggests it was an evolution in thinking.
"I can't say that there was a specific moment in time that the decision to change the transfer arrangement crystalized in my mind," he said.
"It was obviously made as a result of recommendations from within the department."
Last week, Colvin was publicly attacks by Conservative MPs who suggested he was a Taliban dupe for believing and broadcasting claims of prisoner abuse -- and testifying he'd relayed those concerns to an unreceptive government.
The ensuing Tory attacks on Colvin typified their stock response through much of the detainee debate.
For weeks in early 2007, Conservatives continued to defend the existing 2005 prisoner transfer agreement, saying if there was any abuse of detainees they would have been informed.
On Feb. 2, 2007, then-defence minister Gordon O'Connor told the Commons that "We are satisfied with the modalities of the agreement."
In the same month, O'Connor claimed that the president of the Red Cross had called Canada's detainee arrangement "spotless."
On March 21, Prime Minister Stephen Harper excoriated Liberals for continuing to raise the detainee issue.
"I can understand the passion that the Leader of the Opposition and members of his party feel for the Taliban prisoners," said Harper.
"I just wish occasionally they would show the same passion for Canadian soldiers."
And in April that year, then Tory House Leader Peter Van Loan told CTV that "We have yet to see one specific allegation of torture."
Van Loan accused Liberals of continuing "to repeat the baseless accusations made by those who wish to undermine our forces there."
A month later, the 2005 prisoner transfer agreement was rewritten.
Critics say only the paper trail of classified documents can clear up what the government knew about prisoner abuse, and how it reacted.
NDP MP Paul Dewar said the government could easily find a way to permit MPs on the committee to see the documents while preventing public revelations of sensitive national security issues. He suggested national security is not really the impediment.
"First of all, what do they consider national security?" said the New Democrat.
"Their consideration is national embarrassment, not national security."
MacKay revealed Friday that the active and retired generals had been provided with full, uncensored copies of the reports by the Attorney General in order to prepare for their testimony at the committee.
