Foreign minister Peter MacKay says that two Afghan detainees have made new allegations of abuse at the hands of Afghan jailers.
He told a joint Commons committee meeting Wednesday that a total of four detainees have accused Afghan authorities of torture since Canada signed a new prison monitoring agreement.
"These are serious allegations and they were received by Canadian officials during visits that were arranged and sought," he told the committee.
The allegations are proof the new oversight system is working, he said.
And he emphasized there were never any allegations of any abuse by the Canadian soldiers.
For human rights lawyer Amir Attaran, the new claims show that NATO needs its own detention facility in Afghanistan.
"What this says is the new agreement of a month ago is an absolute failure," he said.
Opposition MPs wanted to know how many detainees have been turned over to Afghan authorities.
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says he will not reveal that number.
"The details with respect to detainees is an operational security matter and we will not discuss this matter in the House," he told the meeting.
"The enemy could exploit the situation for propaganda purposes or toward other operational objectives."
Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Ujjal Dosanjh criticized the need for secrecy, arguing the United States has a list of all detainees taken from Afghanistan and transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
The U.S. gives names and citizenship, he said.
"Obviously the United States of America does not believe that releasing the names of detainees, or the number of detainees, is a matter of operational security for their forces, who are also operating in Afghanistan," said Dosanjh.
"Why is it that we alone, as Canadians and the government of Canada, believe that we have to be that secretive?"
O'Connor replied that the situation with Afghan detainees captured by Canadians is far different because they remain in the same country.
"I guess the answer is that Guantanamo Bay is in Cuba and there's no war going on there," he said.
"These are prisoners that the Americans transferred from Afghanistan and wherever else. But we are talking about detainees in Afghanistan, (taken) in support of the Afghanistan government, who are held either in our facility very temporarily, or held in government facilities, so it's quite a different manner."
Despite O'Connor's defence of the government's secretive approach, Attaran claimed to be puzzled by the government's actions.
"The Department of National Defence confirmed to me in writing that 40 detainees had been taken between 2002 and mid-year 2006," he said.
Other developments
ABC News reports that convoys intercepted carried the same type of Iranian-made arms used in bombs in Iraq.
The scale of the operation suggests that the operation must be part of official Iranian policy, claimed a coalition report obtained by the network.
In Jabalussaraj, female Afghan journalist Zakia Zaki was gunned down in front of her eight-year-old son.
She had opened a radio station after the Taliban fell in late 2001.
Zaki was the second female journalist to be murdered in the past few days.
With a report from CTV's Robert Fife
