I've republished these quotes from the Globe and Mail out of sequence, mainly for my convenience:
[University of Ottawa Professor Amir] Attaran said his interest in the detainee issue began about a year ago when he was asked by the Law Society of Upper Canada to speak at a symposium on torture.
"I asked myself, 'What steps is Canada taking to make sure there will not be torture during our military intervention in Afghanistan?' " He said he ran into a brick wall when he tried to get a copy of the detainee-transfer agreement and that it would have remained secret if he had not persisted in asking questions.
"When I saw it I was very alarmed," he said. "What scandalizes me and what should scandalize this nation . . . [is that] today we are signatories to a treaty under which we do transfer prisoners to the Afghan National Police, self-confessed torturers."
Now what, I wonder, would Prof. Attaran have us do with these prisoners? I doubt he has in mind shooting them on the spot, as we are fully entitled to do, given their status as non-uniformed combatants.
Since handing them over to the Afghan authorities is not an option in Attaran's opinion, are we then to keep them in our custody indefinitely; our soldiers increasingly tied up as glorified jailers? Or should we transfer them to Canada, whence a veritable feast of litigation will ensue by Attaran and his cronies (all underwritten by the government, mind you), trying to gain freedom (and refugee status) for these barbarians.
If Attaran gets his way, expect a quiet message to be propagated through the ranks: Taliban and al-Qaeda die where we find them.
It wouldn't be anything new. Following the massacre of Canadian prisoners by the SS in Normandy, we proved rather difficult to surrender to.
Attaran said his interest in human rights and the accountability of institutions grew out of his immigrant experience and a seminal trip through Africa before working on his doctorate at Oxford.
"There in Africa, in the middle of Angola, it was astonishing to me that young men and women of my age who were just fantastically mentally gifted . . . would never have the opportunity to go to Berkeley, to go to Oxford, UBC, be a faculty member at Harvard, Ottawa.
"They were opportunities I got and they didn't -- just by accident of birth. . . . So it is clear to me that there is something that I have to pay back. That is the foundation of my morality."
Yeah, whatever, you preening jackass. If the Taliban get back in power, too bad that Afghan children won't get those opportunities. Sucks to be them, huh?
