...when we juxtapose:Corrections Canada officer Linda Garwood-Filbert, February, 2007:
[I]n the months prior to public allegations of abuse and torture, there was compelling evidence of terrible conditions in Afghan prisons. In addition to routine reports by diplomats citing widespread torture and abuse, Canadian officials were also delivering first-hand accounts showing how grim the prisons were.
In one, Linda Garwood-Filbert, the newly arrived leader of a Correctional Service Canada inspections team, asked for better boots in February, 2007, months before the published reports, because she was “walking through blood and fecal matter” on the floor of cells as they toured Afghan prisons.
Corrections Officer Linda Garwood-Filbert today, at the parliamentary committee examining allegations of abuse of transferred Afghan detainees:
A Corrections Canada official who worked as a co-ordinator for prison reform in Afghanistan for two years says she never saw any physical signs that detainees had been abused or tortured.
Linda Garwood-Filbert told a special House of Commons committee investigating Afghan detainee transfers that she visited two prisons and the Afghan National Police headquarters 47 times in 2007.
The visits included 26 interviews of detainees conducted by Corrections Canada, she said Wednesday.
Garwood-Filbert said she would try to substantiate claims of abuse from inmates who recounted what they were told or heard or what had happened to them personally.
“Although I took care to look for them, there were no physical signs of abuse to validate their statements,” Garwood-Filbert said.
