| International News

a telephone interview from Winnipeg Apr. 23, Father John Perry said there is enough evidence that the Afghan prison system applies torture “just in case someone knows something” as routinely as North American police take DNA samples.

Father Perry, a professor at St. Paul’s College at the University of Manitoba, said even a suspicion that handing over prisoners to torture demands that one adopts the conservative position. “We can’t smugly say they promised us they won’t do this and we believe them.”

Allegations that Afghan officials are torturing Taliban captives have dogged Canadian officials for months. Most recently an April 23 Globe and Mail story based on 30 face-to-face interviews with prisoners reported they claimed to have been beaten, starved and otherwise mistreated.

Counterterrorism expert John Thompson, a Catholic, is more skeptical of the Globe’s allegations. In a telephone interview from Toronto April 23, he said Jihadis have all been instructed to say they’ve been tortured. “The claim is always there. Often there is no physical evidence of torture at all.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor have stated they are satisfied with assurances from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) that they will monitor prisoner treatment, but the Globe reported April 24 the AIHRC does not have the staff to do so. Human-rights experts have also warned Canada could be in violation of international law and guilty of possible war crimes.

Father Perry said the agreement with the Afghan government and AIHRC should be torn up and Canada should start over, or possibly look at creating its own detention facilities. Human-rights experts have also suggested NATO forces construct them. However, Father Perry noted that could create an “Abu Ghraib” situation where Canadian soldiers might end up abusing detainees the way American soldiers did at the notorious Iraqi prison.

“We could easily get involved in messy situations if we have to hold and interrogate prisoners ourselves,” he said.

Thompson said Canada should do its own investigation. If torture is proven, Canada should not turn prisoners over to the Afghans but find another way to detain them. He warned, however, allegations would flood out from any Canadian-run facility, too.

No complaints have been leveled against Canadian soldiers, who were praised in the Globe report for their gentle handling the prisoners.

Thompson said different ideas of what constitutes torture create a large gray area, making it easy to move from light gray to dark gray. “It’s easy to criticize the crossover point for someone else when you yourself have never encountered the situation. It’s easy to have high standards when you’re safe,” he said.

There is a universal understanding, however, that electric shocks and beating constitute torture, he said. “I would be shocked if Canadian troops were using these techniques,” Thompson said. Torture dehumanizes both the subject and the interrogator, he said.

The Taliban, however, are not just local peasants, but include many international terrorists who do have the intelligence to save human life elsewhere, he said. “Allegations of torture, which often turn out to be grossly exaggerated, have inhibited the gathering of effective intelligence,” he added.

Father Perry said the ancient Roman legal system permitted torture. “Torture was always seen as a very risky, dangerous, problematic thing to do, but it was considered the best and the quickest way to get the information they needed. It seemed to work for them. That’s why it’s been around.”

Church teaching is clear: torture is never permissible, even for the gravest reasons, Father Perry said, noting that that’s because the church has a deontological or rules-based approach to ethics. In other words, moral standards are objective and absolute and based on the inviolability of the human person. That contrasts, he said, with a utilitarian approach that seeks the greatest good for the greatest number, suggesting that a utilitarian model would permit torture in the event, say, of an imminent nuclear attack.

An imminent attack is not merely a preposterous plot on the television’ show “24,” featuring Jack Bauer, Father Perry said, pointing to a recent story about a leaked British intelligence document revealing that Al Qaeda members in Iraq are planning an attack with a casualty level of Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But even if British officials had a plotter in custody, it would be wrong to torture, according to church teachings, he said.

Torture most often results in victims telling whatever they think their torturers want to hear, often making the information unreliable, Father Perry said.

In 1995, in the case of Abdul Hakim Murad, however, the methods used by ...