Missing transfer orders ‘may take years’ to find

Posted on Apr 28, 2010 in Records Management News

Miss­ing trans­fer orders ‘may take years’ to find

By JULIET O’NEILL, Can­west News Ser­viceApril 28, 2010

Records of Afghan detainee trans­fer orders show­ing whether Cana­dian mil­i­tary com­man­ders took the risk of tor­ture into account are buried in sea ship­ping con­tain­ers and “may take years” to locate, the Mil­i­tary Police Com­plaints Com­mis­sion was told yesterday.

The rev­e­la­tion by Major Denis Gagnon emerged when he was closely ques­tioned by lawyer Paul Champ, who said the com­mis­sion is on the verge of decid­ing whether it has to sus­pend pub­lic hear­ings, partly because of miss­ing and delayed doc­u­ments from the Defence Department.

Gagnon said the doc­u­ments are “all thrown together in a stor­age bin, a sea con­tainer,” and an assess­ment of how long it would take to cat­a­logue doc­u­ments and iden­tify the records requested by the com­mis­sion may take years.

Ear­lier, a senior mil­i­tary offi­cial tes­ti­fied that some Afghan detainee doc­u­ments requested by the com­mis­sion have been delayed to ensure no infor­ma­tion gets out that could jeop­ar­dize the secu­rity of troops in Afghanistan.

“We know full well that Canada’s ene­mies are ready to use that kind of infor­ma­tion against our troops that are deployed there,” Brig. Gen. Richard Blanchette said. “That is why there have been cer­tain delays in pro­duc­ing those documents.”

The com­mis­sion was also told that Defence offi­cials are screen­ing out doc­u­ments that mil­i­tary police would not have seen in the course of their duties.

Gagnon said he makes the deci­sion on what mil­i­tary police would have seen based on his per­sonal expe­ri­ence and his knowl­edge of com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nels within the mil­i­tary chain of com­mand and com­mu­ni­ca­tions links with the For­eign Affairs Department.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Missing+transfer+orders+take+years+find/2958734/story.html#ixzz0mPukzgUN