Canadian troops have never been found to have mistreated Afghan detainees in their custody, having been cleared of virtually all allegations brought forward against them in the past four years.
The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service says it has investigated about a dozen cases of alleged detainee mistreatment since 2006. They included complaints that detainees had not been given enough time to use the washroom, or the ability to wash for religious rituals.
Canadian soldiers "acted appropriate when interacting with the detainees," and all of the allegations of mistreatment were determined to be unfounded in each of the cases, the CFNIS said in a statement that was released Monday night.
Two allegations were reported in 2007 and another the year before. In all three cases, a CFNIS investigation determined that the allegations were unfounded.
In 2008, six complaints were lodged by Afghan detainees. Investigators found that the allegations were unfounded in five of these cases. In the sixth case, Canadian Forces members were "cleared regarding mistreatment of detainees," the CFNIS said. Other aspects remain under investigation in the sixth case.
This year, three other allegations were investigated. And in all three of these cases, investigators determined that the allegations were unfounded.
Military analyst Scott Taylor, the publisher of Esprit de Corps magazine, said such allegations can be the result of inherent language and communication barriers between prisoners and their guards.
"Some of the practical things like conveying to your captors that you need to go to the washroom or you need to do a certain thing, if you don't speak the language, can be problematic," Taylor told Â鶹´«Ã½ Channel Tuesday in an interview from Ottawa.
"And of course there's always a suspicion between a guard and a prisoner that they're going to use any sort of release or temporary change of circumstance to better their chance of escape. So I don't believe for a minute that there wasn't some confusion in that the Afghan prisoners may have believed themselves to be hard done by."
The CFNIS statement was released at a time when a committee of MPs is probing allegations that the Conservative government ignored warnings that Afghan detainees were abused after being handed over to Afghan authorities.
Taylor said Canadians may confuse the two issues. Canadian soldiers are not being accused of doing anything wrong in the case of Afghan prisoners who were handed over to Afghan authorities and subsequently abused, he said.
"I think there's a chance here that people are going to start mixing up apples and oranges," Taylor said.
With files from The Canadian Press
