Former Dutch general says torture allegations were taken seriously "You can say: 'That's it, I'm no longer part of the game.' But that's also putting your head in the sand," says Dick Berlijn. By Lee Berthiaume Published December 9, 2009

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Dick Berlijn

The Dutch government felt reports of torture and abuse in Afghan prisons were serious enough in 2006 to negotiate provisions for monitoring visits in its detainee transfer agreement, says the former head of the Dutch military.

In an exclusive interview with Embassy on Friday, retired general Dick Berlijn added that the Dutch felt they had a responsibility to ensure the proper treatment of Afghan detainees even after they were transferred to Afghan authorities.

"You can say 'That's it, I'm no longer part of the game,'" Mr. Berlijn said of transferring detainees. "But that's also putting your head in the sand. So we had been trying to balance the official transfer of responsibility with a watchful eye on our part."

Mr. Berlijn was the Dutch chief of defence staff from 2005 to 2008, during which time the European nation took a lead role in Uruzgan province, next to Kandahar. Like Canada, it has been on the frontlines of the fighting, during which it has also taken detainees.

The differences between the Dutch and Canadian detainee transfer agreements first came to light on Nov. 18 during testimony from Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin to the Commons' Afghanistan committee.

"We did not monitor our own detainees after their transfer," Mr. Colvin said in listing many of the perceived shortfalls in Canada's transfer agreement. "Unlike the British and Dutch, Canada's memorandum of understanding on detainees, signed by General Rick Hillier in December 2005, had no provision for our own officials to follow up on what happened to our detainees after they were handed to the Afghan intelligence service, the NDS, or National Directorate of Security."

Mr. Colvin also stated that the Dutch and British were much quicker at notifying the Red Cross whenever prisoners were taken, kept better records and took much fewer prisoners.

"As of May 2007, Canada had transferred to the Afghan authorities six times as many detainees as the British, who were conducting military operations just as aggressive as ours and had twice as many troops in theatre," Mr. Colvin said, "and we had transferred 20 times as many detainees as the Dutch."

In July 2003, more than 1,000 Dutch soldiers were deployed to Iraq to assist with the US-led efforts in the country. Four months later, the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant published reports that intelligence officers had blasted dozens of Iraqi prisoners with cold water and used loud music during interrogations. The allegations of abuse and torture prompted a massive outcry in the Netherlands and around the world and led to two separate investigations.

The officers involved were eventually cleared of allegations they had tortured the prisoners, but Mr. Berlijn said the event served as an eye-opener for the Dutch military.

"It did set the tone for the events after this whenever we talked about prisoners," Mr. Berlijn said. "How do we treat prisoners? What should the protocol be? People would be extra aware because of this climate if you will. It made everybody very sensitive to this."

But while Mr. Berlijn said what happened with the Dutch mission in Iraq was an important lesson, it wasn't the only reason the Netherlands tried to exercise extreme diligence when trying to figure out what to do with Afghans captured in Uruzgan. There was also a sense of responsibility for detainees, he said, particularly given the reports of abuse and torture in Afghan prisons.

"We all had our doubts whether, let's say, the standards for treating prisoners would be the same with the Afghan authorities as what we deem proper in the West," Mr. Berlijn said. "We've all heard stories that sometimes the prisoners in Afghan prisons were not treated all that well."

Mr. Berlijn said local strongmen were particularly notorious, while he had also heard reports of prisoners being killed while in detention. That is why post-transfer monitoring was a key element of the Dutch transfer agreements, he said, noting the British followed essentially the same process. And those monitoring visits by Dutch embassy officials did happen, he added.

"I'm not sure if those were real reports but we understood that was the kind of world we were working in and that's why we took those precautions," he said. "We did not want to, let's say, make it easy on ourselves by saying 'Well, we handed them off to the Afghan authorities, it's no longer our business.' That was not the case. We understood we had a responsibility there.

"We had arrangements where our embassy people and also the Red Cross were able to visit the prisoners once they were transferred to the Afghans to make sure they were not tortured or being maltreated."

Mr. Berlijn said the Dutch, British and Canadians "compared notes" when it came to the question of transferring detainees to Afghan authorities, but in the end Canada decided to undertake its own process. Mr. Berlijn said he could not remember why the Canadians went their own way, but the British and Dutch systems were essentially the same.

While then-chief of defence staff Rick Hillier signed Canada's detainee agreement in December 2005, Mr. Berlijn said he did not sign the Dutch version.

"I didn't do it," he said. "I would think that that would be embassy, but it wasn't me. Because it's a formal arrangement between two states. That's how we treated it."

Mr. Berlijn said the entire detainee question is extremely complicated because he wasn't sure what would have happened if the Dutch found people they had transferred to Afghan control were being abused or tortured. However, he said Afghan authorities were extremely receptive to Dutch concerns.

"I think in general the Afghans...played ball with our requests to visit the prisoners. So they understood what the situation was," he said.

During his testimony to the Afghanistan committee, Mr. Colvin said the Dutch and British were much more transparent when it came to detainees. He said the Dutch government immediately informed the country's parliament as soon as a detainee was taken.

Mr. Berlijn, however, said that wasn't the case. While the Dutch tried to be transparent because of the fall-out from the Iraq torture allegations, the bottom line was that there was no responsibility to report to parliament.

"It would have been reported to me as the chief of defence and I would have reported to our minister," he said. "And probably what we would have done then is issue a report to our press. Not as a responsibility to our parliament. I'm not sure if our minister of defence would have mentioned that in his cabinet meeting on Friday in cabinet. But no, there's no formal obligation for us to report to parliament."

lee@embassymag.ca