Ottawa reverses torture stance

The Canadian government now says Guantanamo Bay, the United States and Israel were mistakenly included as sites of possible torture in a government manual that was inadvertently disclosed last week. Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier said on Jan. 19 he has ordered the manual to be rewritten and assured the US and Israel that the document did not reflect the government's position. "I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department's torture awareness training. It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies," Bernier said in a written statement. His comments enraged human rights lawyers who accused the government of playing politics rather than guarding the rights of its citizens. "This is what we've always suspected. It's outrageous," said Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman. "The government is more concerned with international relations than making sure Canadian citizens aren't tortured." Waldman represented Canadian Maher Arar, who was arrested by US authorities in New York as a suspected terrorist and then sent to Syria, where he was tortured and detained without charges for a year. Arar was issued an apology and $11.5 million settlement from the government last year for Canada's role in giving the US erroneous information. A federal inquiry investigating Arar's case recommended that Canadian foreign affairs officials receive training on how to identify signs of torture. Foreign Affairs created the "Torture Awareness Workshop Reference Materials," a manual that gives the legal definitions of torture and instructs consular officials of how to detect signs of abuse. Under the heading, "Possible Torture/Abuse Cases," the manual lists Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Guantanamo Bay, Iran, Israel, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the US. The document was accidentally released last week as part of the government's disclosure in a legal challenge launched by Amnesty International, which is protesting against the actions of Canadian Forces in transferring detainees into Afghan custody where they say they have been tortured. The inclusion of Guantanamo Bay in the training manual was especially embarrassing to the government because it has publicly stated that Canada accepts assurances that the US treats detainees humanely despite the international outcry over abuse at the prison. Toronto-born Omar Khadr is now the only Western detainee remaining in Guantanamo and Canada the only ally of the US who has not denounced the prison. Amnesty's Canadian secretary general said he was disappointed by Bernier's statement. "To see now that they're pulling back and clearly the motivation for that is not that there's been some reassessment of the human rights records of those countries, but rather only the concern that we don't want to embarrass close allies. That's disturbing," Alex Neve said.