OTTAWA, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Canada's foreign ministry, responding to
pressure from close allies, said on Saturday it would remove the United
States and Israel from a watch list of countries where prisoners risk
being tortured. Both nations expressed unhappiness after it
emerged that they had been listed in a document that formed part of a
training course manual on torture awareness given to Canadian diplomats.
Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier said he regretted the embarrassment
caused by the public disclosure of the manual, which also classified
some U.S. interrogation techniques as torture. "It contains a
list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies. I have directed
that the manual be reviewed and rewritten," Bernier said in a statement.
"The manual is neither a policy document nor a statement of policy. As
such, it does not convey the government's views or positions."
The document -- made available to Reuters and other media outlets --
embarrassed the minority Conservative government, which is a staunch
ally of both the United States and Israel. U.S. ambassador David Wilkins said the listing was absurd while the Israeli envoy said he wanted his country removed.
Asked why the two countries had been put on the list, a spokesman for
Bernier said: "The training manual purposely raised public issues to
stimulate discussion and debate in the classroom." The
government mistakenly gave 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. No one from Amnesty was immediately available for comment.
Under "definition of torture" the document lists U.S. interrogation
techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and
blindfolding prisoners. It also mentions the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where a Canadian man is being held.
The man, Omar Khadr, has been in Guantanamo Bay for five years. He is
accused of killing a U.S. soldier during a clash in Afghanistan in
2002, when he was 15. Other countries on the watch list include Syria, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.
The foreign ministry launched the torture awareness course after Ottawa
was rapped for the way it handled the case of Canadian engineer Maher
Arar, who was deported from the United States to Syria in 2002.
Arar says he was tortured repeatedly during the year he spent in
Damascus prisons. An official inquiry into the affair showed Canadian
diplomats had not been trained to detect whether detainees might have
been abused.
