Canadian military police did not abuse three suspected Taliban prisoners after they were captured in April 2006, an investigation has found.
The probe was conducted by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (CFNIS) after University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran launched a complaint in January 2007.
Attaran alleged that at least one, and as many as three, Afghan detainees taken captive by the Canadian Forces appeared "to have been beaten while detained and interrogated by them."
Attaran also claimed the men never received proper medical attention and were then handed off to the Afghan National Police.
The accusations were based on documents that Attaran obtained under the Access to Information Act.
In a press release Friday, the CFNIS said "the investigation found no evidence that any of the three detainees were mistreated or abused during capture, detention or transfer to Afghan authorities."
The statement said the injuries belonging to one of the detainees were the result of the "individual engaging one of the CF members and trying to seize a weapon."
The report found that "reasonable force" was used on that detainee.
A second detainee suffered minor scrapes when he tried to escape by jumping over a steep embankment, said the report. The third detainee was not injured.
The report also found that all three detainees were given proper medical care while in custody.
Investigators also said there was no reasonable ground to support charges that the Military Police should have launched a probe into the cause of the detainees' injuries when they were first recorded.
"The CFNIS spent considerable time and resources on this complex investigation," Lieutenant-Colonel Gilles Sansterre, Commanding Officer of the CFNIS, said Friday.
"The investigation was a thorough process which included in excess of one hundred interviews across Canada, the United States and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan."
The Military Police Complaints Commission is conducting its own investigation into Attaran's complaints that military police should have investigated the injuries to the three detainees.
A National Defence Board of Inquiry (BOI) into how detainees are handled in-theatre is also ongoing.
