Canada has removed Israel and the United States from a government torture watch-list after being rebuked by the Israeli and U.S. ambassadors.
A Jan. 17 CTV News report revealed that Canada’s Foreign Affairs
department had placed both Israel and the United States on the list as
part of a training manual for diplomats visiting Canadian detainees in
foreign prisons.
It also named China, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and others on the list, which was meant to help envoys spot signs of torture or mistreatment in these countries.
The training document placed particular emphasis on the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, where Syrian-Canadian Omar Khadr has been imprisoned since 2002 on charges of war crimes. He alleges torture at the hands of his American guards.
The report prompted swift calls from American and Israeli representatives to Ottawa, demanding explanations.
Israel’s ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, left, said he was “shocked” the manual listed the Jewish state, while David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Ottawa, called it “offensive” that his country was named.
Neil Hrab, communications director for Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, initially distanced his office from the report.
“The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government,” he told The CJN last Friday. “We take the issue of torture very seriously. The training manual purposely raised public issues to stimulate discussion and debate in the classroom.”
By the weekend, in response to the diplomatic pressure, Bernier apologized to Canadian allies listed in the document.
“I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department’s torture awareness training. It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies,” he said in a Jan. 19 statement. “I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten.”
The manual’s existence was revealed when it was acquired by Amnesty International Canada through legal disclosure in a lawsuit against the federal government seeking to end the Canadian Forces’ practice of transferring detainees to Afghan authorities.
The Canada-Israel Committee criticized the training document and the initial response by the government.
“There has never been a single substantiated case of a Canadian being subjected to torture in Israel,” CIC chair Moshe Ronen told The CJN.
But the CIC was gratified to hear of Bernier’s decision to review the manual.
“While the CIC remains concerned that a document such as the one in question would have included Israel as a suspect country in the first place and that such a document would not have benefited from review at more senior levels of the [ministry] or directly from the minister’s office, we are pleased that the minister has reacted quickly to rectify the situation,” it said in response to Bernier’s comments.
On Sunday, Baker told the Canadian Press he is satisfied with the minister’s response, adding that “Israel doesn’t engage in torture. It’s prohibited by Israeli law.”
Details about who authored the training manual remain unknown, but CP reported that it has existed for the last two years since being written in the aftermath of the Maher Arar affair.
Arar, a Syrian-Canadian, says he was wrongfully deported to Syria in 2002, where he he was tortured. U.S. authorities alleged he was an Al Qaeda operative, after the RCMP supplied them with erroneous intelligence. A public inquiry later backed up his claims and cleared him of any links with terror groups.