-
Kiwi troops in Afghanistan - Source: ONE News -
Watch Video
-
Related
Labour is adding its support to calls for an inquiry into claims Kiwi troops handed over Afghan prisoners to authorities who tortured them.
Journalist Jon Stephenson claimed on TVNZ's Marae programme that NZ's Special Forces in Afghanistan are "very involved in arresting prisoners and transferring those prisoners to Afghans, who are likely to torture them".
New Zealand Defence Force rules, and international laws, say troops can not hand over prisoners to another country if there is evidence they will be tortured or mistreated.
"I have absolute confidence in the integrity of the SAS people themselves," Labour leader Phil Goff told TV ONE's Breakfast.
"What I have less confidence about is if prisoners are being handed across then what happens when they're given to the Afghan authorities - they're notoriously corrupt and notorious for ill-treatment of their prisoners."
Goff was Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2002 when he said the SAS handed over 55 Taliban suspects to US and Canadian forces. He only found out about the incident five years later.
He said the prisoners had been handed over in good faith because the New Zealand forces did not have suitable facilities for keeping them.
"Subsequent revelations show the treatment of Afghan prisoners by those authorities was less than acceptable from our point of view.
"We did not take prisoners and hand them over for some time after that."
Goff said the practice of handing over prisoners had been renewed under the National government and wanted reassurances detainees were being treated properly.
"There should be an inquiry in terms of giving assurances that what our people are doing is the right thing... that people captured are not subject to de-grading treatment or torture.
"We're a decent country, we've got a reputation for treating people fairly - even those taken as prisoners of war - we need to live up to that reputation."
The Green Party led calls for an independent inquiry into the claims, saying both Labour and National had not given straight answers on the issue.
"This new evidence shows we can no longer accept the Defence Minister's assurances that the SAS is not detaining prisoners and handing them over to subsequent torture," Green Party defence spokesperson Keith Locke said.
"This is a grave matter because, on the evidence, New Zealand may be accused of violating the international rules of war."
Defence Minister Wayne Mapp told TV ONE's Q A programme on Sunday there has been a huge amount of work done in recent times to ensure much better attention is paid to the rule of law with regards to prisoners of war.
"I can assure you that basically we do everything properly. You would expect that of New Zealand soldiers. They expect that of themselves," Mapp said.
Ron Smith from Waikato University said Stephenson's claims could be part of a plot to undermine New Zealand's involvement in Afghanistan.
He said the journalist's story does not look critically at the evidence it uses.
