Thursday, March 25, 2010

Ugly things

Whatever their motive for dropping off those 2500 pages documents today, the Conservatives have opened the gates now.
"After they handed over the detainee, the local authority would walk the detainee out of range and the detainee would be shot," says a 2008 report on the soldier's claims. "This occurred on more than one occasion."
...

A February 2008 memo prepared at National Defence Headquarters by Capt. S.M. Moore noted "significant shortcomings and areas for concern with regard to the conduct of [military police] operations in Afghanistan." Many of the problems "are systemic" and result from a lack of oversight, it said. The memo notes a survey conducted "in theatre revealed that soldiers stated they had witnessed the abuse of detainees" — yet the information was not immediately passed on to military police. It adds that on Feb. 15, 2008, two unknown individuals approached a female military police member when she exited the shower, grabbed her arms, pushed her against the shower wall and told her: "MPs mind your own business." Other documents suggest many of the military police assigned to Afghanistan lacked basic soldiering skills. The material was tabled in the House of Commons without translations, in no particular order, and with deletions on nearly every page.


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