Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has called for the resignation of Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, over the alleged mismanagement of Taliban detainees.
"He should be fired because he no longer has the confidence of the prime minister," Ignatieff told CTV's Mike Duffy Live on Friday.
"We've got troops in the field and the prime minister is leaving this man to twist slowly in the wind. At a time when we've got soldiers in combat, you have to have civilian leadership that's working together, and they're clearly not. They muzzled him in the House on Thursday."
During question period on Thursday, opposition MPs repeatedly asked whether the government had finalized a deal with local Afghan authorities to monitor the safety of detainees. But O'Connor was never the one to answer.
On Wednesday, O'Connor had said a deal did exist, although Prime Minister Stephen Harper seemed to contradict that statement the day after, saying officials had yet to formally draft the aforementioned agreement.
The issue was further confused when Omar Samad, the Afghan ambassador to Canada, said that up until recently Canadian officials did not have the right to visit detainees.
"What agreement do they have? Sometimes they talk about an arrangement, then you think they've got that bolted down, and then the prime minister says they're still negotiating it," said Ignatieff.
"It's not clear what they've got beyond a phone call, and that's not good enough because, as we've discovered, it may be that detainees handed over by Canada have their lives at risk."
On Monday, The Globe and Mail reported that Afghan prisoners, after being handed over to local authorities, are routinely beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked and interrogated by electric shock in Kandahar jails.
The newspaper report chronicled claims of abuse by Afghan authorities after more than 30 face-to-face interviews with men recently captured in Kandahar province.
Â鶹´«Ã½ interviewed one local Afghan who said he was beaten unconscious by Afghan police, after Canadian troops followed protocol and turned him over to local officials.
Critics have said Taliban detainees do not fall under the Geneva Convention because they are terrorists, not members of a military unit. But Ignatieff dismissed that claim.
"There are obligations to any set of combatants. And these are, or were, regarded as former combatants," he said.
"The real issue is whether Canada is upholding its obligations under international law. That's a big issue. I think this government is on all fours, improvising madly in the face of a serious obligation, and failing to carry out that obligation."
