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Canada torture list includes US

"It's therefore reassuring and refreshing to see that ... foreign policy considerations didn't trump the human rights concerns."

Alex Neve, Amnesty International Canada secretary-general

The Canadian Foreign Affairs Departmen has placed the US and Israel are on a watch list of countries where prisoners risk being tortured, CTV television reported on Thursday.

The document cited the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a place where prisoners could be tortured. Guantanamo holds Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of killing a US soldier with a hand grenade in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.

CTV said the document is used in a workshop to teach Canadian diplomats how to tell if a Canadian held in a foreign jail has been tortured, CTV reported.

The document lists a series of countries where the possibility of torture is high, including Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and China. But it also includes the US and Israel.

It highlights US torture techniques including forced nudity, isolation and sleep deprivation, CTV said.

Questioned by email on the reported document, Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Neil Hrab said "the training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government."

In an interview with CTV, Khadr's lawyer, Bill Kuebler, said he was surprised the Canadian government has done nothing to protect his client if there are suspicions he may have been mistreated in Guantanamo.

Kuebler said other western countries have successfully pressured for the release of their citizens held at Guantanamo.

Human rights groups and prominent Canadian citizens are calling for 21-year-old Khadr's repatriation so he can benefit from normal due process of law.

Training for signs of torture began after Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar in 2002 was deported by the US to Syria, where he was imprisoned for nearly a year and said he was tortured.

A Canadian inquiry cleared Arar of all suspicions of terrorism and the Canadian government issued an apology and awarded him a substantial compensation.

"The United States does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances," said a spokeswoman for the US embassy in Ottawa.

The government mistakenly provided the document to Amnesty International Canada as part of a court case the rights organization has launched against Ottawa over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.

Amnesty Secretary-General Alex Neve said his group had very clear evidence of abuse in US and Israeli jails.

"It's therefore reassuring and refreshing to see that ... both of those countries have been listed and that foreign policy considerations didn't trump the human rights concerns and keep them off the list," he said.
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