A Canadian diplomat with extensive experience in Afghanistan says she raised the possibility that detainees transferred from Canadian to Afghan custody were at risk of torture back in 2005.
But Eileen Olexiuk says her concerns were ignored.
She tells the CBC she arrived in Afghanistan in 2002 and was second in command at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul.
Ms. Olexiuk says she told the Liberal government in power at the time that the transfer agreement didn't do enough to protect detainees.
She said Canadian officials didn't monitor detainees after the transfer, and that left detainees vulnerable once they were in Afghan hands.
Ms. Olexiuk, who met with torture victims during her three years in Afghanistan, says she documented her concerns in human rights reports prepared for the Department of Foreign Affairs She says she stressed that Canadians should have been visiting the detainees regularly after transfers and making records of detainees who were still being held and those who had been released.
But Ms. Olexiuk says her advice was ignored by Paul Martin's government.
"I don't think anybody really cared, quite frankly," she said.
It was only in 2007 that allegations of torture arose in the media, with reports of transferred detainees being beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked and shocked.