PMO issued instructions on denying abuse in '07Former NATO official says response to reports was 'scripted' in Ottawa
Toronto Star: Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office used a '6,000-mile screwdriver' to oversee the denial of reports of Afghan detainee abuse when the scandal first erupted in 2007, according to a former senior NATO public affairs official who was then based in Kabul.
The former official, speaking on condition his name not be used, [said] that Harper's office in Ottawa 'scripted and fed' the precise wording NATO officials in Kabul used to repudiate allegations of abuse "at a time when it was privately and generally acknowledged in our office that the chances of good treatment at the hands of Afghan security forces were almost zero."
"It was highly unusual. I was told this was the titanic issue for Prime Minister Harper and that every single statement that went out needed to be cleared by him personally," said the former official, who is not Canadian. "The lines were, 'We have no evidence' of coercive treatment being used against detainees handed over to the Afghans. There were very clear instructions for a blanket denial. The pressure to hold to that line was channelled via Canadian military and diplomatic personnel in Kabul. But it was made clear to us that this was coming from the Prime Minister's Office, which was running the public affairs aspect of Canadian engagement in Afghanistan with a 6,000-mile screwdriver."
The official described the tensions over the fate of detainees as 'uniquely Canadian' -- despite the fact that doubts over the treatment of Afghan detainees were ubiquitous among all NATO partners with military footprints in Afghanistan. "It was not an issue for anyone else, though other nations ought to have been as concerned as the Canadians. The Americans in particular were not remotely squeamish on this. To them, everyone was an enemy combatant."...
The dynamic was especially disturbing to Canadian military officials based at ISAF in Kabul, the former official said... Many NATO officials in Kabul were also aware how seriously Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin was following the issue, he said. "Richard Colvin behaved as a straight-up-and-down person, completely honest and doing his job to the best of his abilities... He had to be terribly careful. He couldn't speak to us about this. But it was clear that the tone at the Canadian Embassy had changed. It became far more politicized -- and it was clear that Richard Colvin was struggling enormously to do his work on the question of detainees."
