OTTAWA - Defence headquarters looked into allegations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and determined that some detainees mentioned in a 2007 newspaper story matched some who had been in Canadian custody, an inquiry was told.
But the fact some names matched up was not enough to persuade a senior military police officer who led the investigation to look any deeper.
Lt.-Col. Douglas Boot and a small team from Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command, which runs the military's operations outside of North America, felt a story in the Globe and Mail by itself didn't merit further investigation.
Boot told an inquiry Thursday the duty to look into prisoner abuse at the hands of Afghan authorities should fall to the Correctional Service of Canada or the Foreign Affairs Department.
"My military policemen had more than enough to do with their own responsibilities," he said. "We didn't need to go looking for work."
Several times Boot raised the spectre of the Somalia scandal of the 1990s -- in which a Canadian soldier beat to death a Somali teen who was in custody -- that left a deep scar on the military that took years to heal.
The "Damocles sword of Somalia" hung over the military, Boot said.
"My job was not to worry about Afghanistan," he said. "My job was to worry about Canadian Forces soldiers."
About Afghan authorities, he said: "It wasn't my job to teach them to be Canadians."
Boot was the provost martial for the Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command from August 2006 to July 2007.
He appeared Thursday before the Military Police Complaints Commission.
The commission is investigating an allegation from Amnesty International Canada and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
The groups say Canadian military police did not properly investigate officers responsible for directing the transfer of detainees to Afghan authorities, allegedly at the risk of torture.
Transferring prisoners between countries knowing they likely face torture is considered a war crime.
