Jesuit: Canadians complicit if they hand over prisoners for torture

Published: 2007-04-26

OTTAWA (CNS) -- If Canadian soldiers hand over Taliban captives knowing that Afghan authorities will torture them, the soldiers, their commanding officers and the Canadian government are complicit and morally compromised, said a Jesuit author. Jesuit Father John Perry, author of "Torture: Religious Ethics and National Security," said even the suspicion that the prisoners will be tortured should be enough to change the soldiers' actions. "We can't smugly say 'they promised us they won't do this, and we believe them,'" he said in an April 23 telephone interview from Winnipeg, where he teaches at St. Paul's College at the University of Manitoba. Father Perry noted that there is plenty of evidence that the Afghan prison system applies torture as routinely as North American police take DNA samples -- "just in case someone knows something." Church teaching is clear: Torture is never permissible, even for the gravest reasons, he said. Allegations that Afghan officials are torturing Taliban captives have dogged Canadian officials for months. In an April 23 report based on interviews with 30 prisoners, The Globe and Mail newspaper said they claimed to have been beaten, starved and otherwise mistreated.

Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .