Dick in Van

stimulator — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 06:24:06 +0000

About 500 people showed up the elite Vancouver Club to protest Dick Cheney's visit to Vancouver. Cheney was speaking as a guest of the Bon Mot Book Club. It was a sold out $500 a plate dinner to promote Cheney's book In My Time. Activists tried to block guests from entering the club and police had to "snatch" the guests to get through the crowd of angry protesters.

Dick Cheney's Vancouver Visit Galvanizes Spirited Protest

Michael — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 06:06:40 +0000

VANCOUVER - On a cloudy Monday night, hundreds of Vancouver residents gathered at the ‘Vancouver Club’ to protest the visit of former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. This was Cheney's first trip outside of the United States on his book tour.

Hillier dodges questions about Afghan torture

Bruce Wark — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:16:15 +0000

Retired general claims problems were fixed

Rick Hillier, former chief of the Canadian defence staff, dodged questions in Halifax on Saturday about the torture of prisoners handed over by the Canadian military to the Afghan intelligence service. Hillier was asked why the Canadian forces followed a cumbersome six-step method of informing the International Red Cross each time a detainee was transferred to the custody of the Afghans.

Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin told a Parliamentary committee last week in Ottawa that the six-step process took “days, weeks or, in some cases, up to two months” during which time nobody monitored what happened to the prisoners. He added that Canadian authorities also kept poor records making it almost impossible to trace transferred prisoners. According to Colvin, the Canadian military transferred six times more detainees than the British and all of them were likely tortured while in Afghan custody.

When asked why the Canadian military made monitoring what happened to prisoners so difficult, Hillier who originally signed the prisoner transfer agreement in December 2005, replied that the issue of monitoring prisoners was resolved over time.

“The agreement was changed to allow Canadians to have access to all the detainees as is necessary, so over a period of time, it was resolved,” Hillier said refusing to take further questions.

The retired general did not explain why it took more than a year to change the agreement. Under international law, it’s a war crime to hand prisoners over if they’re likely to be tortured.

Colvin testified that many of the Afghan men Canada rounded up were “just local people, farmers, truck drivers, tailors, peasants, random human beings in the wrong place at the wrong time, young men in their fields and villages, who were completely innocent but were nevertheless rounded up. In other words, we retained and handed over for severe torture a lot of innocent people.”