The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor says he will investigate war crime allegations against Canadians over the handling of Afghan detainees if Canada won’t.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo says in a documentary soon to be aired on TVO that Canadian officials are not immune to prosecution if there is evidence that crimes were committed by handing over detainees to face torture.
When Toronto filmmaker Barry Stevens asked Moreno-Ocampo in his film, Prosecutor, if the ICC would pursue a country like Canada over its role in Afghanistan, he replied:
“We’ll check if there are crimes and also we’ll check if a Canadian judge is doing a case or not . . . if they don’t, the court has to intervene. That’s the rule, that’s the system, one standard for everyone.”
Some legal experts have suggested the Canadian government’s dismissal of calls to launch a judicial probe into the allegations has left the door open for outside scrutiny.
Hendin argued there is “sufficient information” that Canadians, including senior military personnel authorizing and implementing the transfers of detainees, knew there was a substantial risk of torture and abuse.
Parliamentary hearings probing the allegations were shut down in 2009 after Conservative MPs boycotted the proceedings. Earlier this month, the justice department went to court in a bid to limit the findings of an independent report by the Military Police Complaints Commission, probing whether the military police knew that detainees transferred to Afghan custody faced a substantial risk of torture.
The government had refused to turn over military and other government documents dealing with the detainee case until threatened with contempt of Parliament. Those documents were subsequently vetted by a judicial panel and ad hoc committee of MPs, but still remain secret, their release on hold because of the election.
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