NATO Cancels Detainee-Transfer System in Afghanistan

And only four years after allegations of torture and abuse first arose!

Some four years after the Canadian government first learned that prisoners caught on Afghan battlefields were often tortured after being handed over to local authorities, NATO has finally put an end to the detainee-transfer system. Seven prisons across Afghanistan have now been blacklisted, in addition to the prisons in Kandahar province to which the Canadian Forces had been transferring their prisoners. The detainee-transfer system began back in 2006, but it only took a year before evidence of torture arose and began a years-long debate in Parliament over whether Canadian soldiers were complicit in their torture. That NATO has admitted there were serious flaws over their transfer system sort of flies in the face of years of Conservative messaging that insisted no prisoners were knowingly handed over to be tortured, despite reams of evidence – and the determination of diplomat Richard Colvin – that would prove otherwise.