Canada’s foreign ministry, responding to pressure from close allies, said on Saturday it would remove the United States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured.
Both nations expressed unhappiness after it emerged they had been listed in a document that formed part of a training course manual on torture awareness More..given to Canadian diplomats.
Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier said he regretted the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual, which also classified some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture.
“It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed that the manual be reviewed and rewritten,” Bernier said in a statement.
“The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy. As such, it does not convey the government’s views or positions.”
The document — made available to Reuters and other media outlets — embarrassed the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch ally of both the United States and Israel.
U.S. ambassador David Wilkins said the listing was absurd, while the Israeli envoy said he wanted his country removed.
Asked why the two countries had been put on the list, a spokesman for Bernier said: “The training manual purposely raised public issues to stimulate discussion and debate in the classroom.”
The government mistakenly gave the document to Amnesty International as part of a court case the rights organization has launched against Ottawa over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.
AMPLE EVIDENCE OF ABUSE
Amnesty International Canada, which says it has ample evidence that prisoners are abused both in U.S. and Israeli jails, said it was disappointed by Bernier’s announcement.
“When it comes to an issue like torture, the government’s main concern should not be embarrassing allies,” Alex Neve, the group’s secretary-general, told Reuters. The U.S. embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under “definition of torture,” the document lists U.S. interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners.
It also mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where a Canadian man is being held.
The man, Omar Khadr, has been in Guantanamo Bay for five years. He is accused of killing a U.S. soldier during a clash in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 15.
Other countries on the watch list include Syria, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
The foreign ministry launched the torture awareness course after Ottawa was criticized for the way it handled the case of Canadian engineer Maher Arar, who was deported from the United States to Syria in 2002.
Arar says he was tortured repeatedly during the year he spent in Damascus prisons. An official inquiry into the affair showed Canadian diplomats had not been trained to detect whether detainees might have been abused.
RELATED ARTICLES
- UN says 70% of Gaza's population faces Catastrophic Hunger
- UK Warns that China is Preparing for Total Nuclear War with the West
- Israeli Rabbi Calls to Genocide Gaza, Says Torah Demands Killing Babies
- Canada to PREEMPTIVELY Arrest People Who MAY Commit Hate Crimes in the Future
- Russia & China Plan Building Nuclear Power Plant on the Moon
Loading ...
What concerns me…no…runs my blood cold.. is when Bush and Rumsfeld (Nazi) are on the news, sanctioning torture because it ensures that our own troops will be tortured in turn when they are captured. I never saw more immaturity in leadership in my life, until Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld took office.
I’d like to know how many of our troops have been tortured because of Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s arrogant mouths?
Everyone knows that torture occurs in war, but no one publicly brags about it for the whole world to hear.
Thank god those clowns are out of the white house.
The US-UK-EU-Israel are the torture capitals of the world.
And as an American patriot this worries me.
Seeing as how American militia and Patriots are stamped “enemies of the NWO”
Look at what happened at the end of the 2-WW.
The European Nationalist were tortured in order to changed there official in court statements to say what the NWO wanted them to say.
They got phony admissions for things they never did. In order to enslave Europe to be put under the Jewish-World-Empires heal.
Torture is wrong. And Jewish Americans have perfected it!
The US torture of isolation,forced nudity,sleep deprivation and blindfolding prisoners is the lesser evils that has been happening: from sexual humiliation to forced sexual activities to corrupt and destroy prisoner’s sanity. The US and Israel are deranged to think this is acceptable while charging other countries with human rights violations and “roguery”.