Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says he is "reasonably confident" an Afghan human rights group can track detainees that Canada has transferred to Afghan authorities.
"I guess some of the proof will be if down the line, they find something wrong in the Afghan system. We'll wait to see what they tell us," he told reporters at the Kandahar air field on Wednesday.
O'Connor went to Afghanistan because he wanted to meet Abdul Noorzai, director the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission for the Kandahar region.
That meeting finally took place Wednesday at the detainee jail inside the NATO base.
"He is a very honest man," O'Connor said after the meeting. "He is very dedicated to human rights."
Noorzai wasn't available for comment after the meeting.
He has said the commission faces an uphill struggle in monitoring the well-being of more than 1,000 inmates in four of Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces.
Noorzai only has a handful of inspectors working for him. His people can't even enter Uruzgan province, immediately to the north of Kandahar, because of the poor security situation.
The commission doesn't even have a budget. Instead, it submits receipts to the government, Noorzai has said.
O'Connor said it would be inappropriate to fund the group, "but what we can do is provide logistics support," he said.
Canada will also follow up on the commission's monitoring efforts by using "unofficial" sources, the minister said without elaborating.
On Feb. 23, Canada and the commission signed an agreement to monitor and report on detainee abuse, a move sparked in part after Ottawa came under criticism for not checking up on what was happening to detainees.
The commission has previously estimated that one in three prisoners handed over by Canadians had been beaten by Afghan jailers. But Noorzai said Tuesday that he's seen no evidence of abuse of Taliban suspects handed over had ever been abused.
Canada's Military Police Complaints Commission is investigating allegations that troops have handed over prisoners knowing they would be abused.
There are investigations going on into the alleged beating of some captured Taliban by Canadian troops.
O'Connor has also taken heat for claiming that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) monitored the treatment of the detainees and would report back to Canadian officials if anything was wrong.
The ICRC denied the claims, saying they would never tell Ottawa about any abuses since they can only make known assessments or interventions to the government whose facilities they are visiting.
With files from The Canadian Press
