Intelligence officer and ex-diplomat Richard Colvin testifies at a commons special committee hearing on transfer of Afghan detainees on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Nov. 18, 2009.

Editorial by The Globe and Mail

The diplomat Richard Colvin was Canada’s eyes and ears in Afghanistan, and there is no reason to believe he has acted with anything but integrity in his public testimony about the routine torture of detainees, and Ottawa’s alleged policy not to know about it.

Mr. Colvin served as acting ambassador for more than a year, overseeing security and intelligence and a myriad of other issues for the foreign affairs department. His eyes and ears were justifiably alert to the problem of torture among detainees turned over by Canadian forces to the Afghan authorities. And now senior Conservatives, up to Defence Minister Peter MacKay, are taking aim at his credibility.

Torture in Afghanistan is far from a well kept secret. A police chief once told The Globe that if he’d had another month to torture his prisoner he would have got the truth out of him. The Globe’s Graeme Smith reported in April, 2007, on a pattern of extreme abuse including the use of electrical currents, boiling water and beatings with cables. Ottawa was not blind to this pattern, thanks in part to the still classified reports of Mr. Colvin. It only pretended to be. Its see-nothing, hear-nothing act, with former defence minister Gordon O’Connor in a starring role (but not the only one), would have been comical but for the subject matter.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Gordon O'Connor, Ottawa, Peter MacKay, Richard Colvin, Torture

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