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On this page:
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| Sgt. Charles Martland |
- Col. Steve Johnson says US soldiers should TOLERATE AFGHAN CUSTOMS, even the rape of young boys.
- Sgt. Charles Martland, a decorated Green Beret was first reprimanded by the US Army for confronting Afghan Police Commander Abdul Rahman, a child rapist, who laughed about his crime and said it was not a big deal.
- Sgt Charles Martland has been punished with "involuntary discharge" from the army.
- Rahman had kidnapped, chained, and then raped a boy for a week, and assaulted his mother for daring to call for help.
- Sgt. Charles Martland and his team leader Daniel Quinn then struck Rahman, who walked away with only bruises. Rahman issued a complaint.
- Quinn has since left the army. Martland stayed on to fight against his dismissal.
- The practice of men raping little boys is a cultural tradition in Afghanistan - illegal but accepted. Read results of a study.
- Congressmen Duncan Hunter and Al Green denounced the army's actions.
- They have written letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.
- Martland, 33, was awarded two Bronze Star medals, including one for valor
- Congressman Hunter, a war veteran, says it shows the US Army moral decay.
- Sgt. Charles Martland "involuntary discharge" will take effect on November 1, 2015.
- Canadian soldiers have been reporting the raping of little boys by Afghan police and soldiers for years, and saying that the army tells them to look the other way
- The Canadian Army did an investigation of these allegations in 2009 and dismissed them for lack of evidence, prompting politicians to denounce it as "sweeping the issue under the rug".
- Former president Jimmy Carter too said we should not criticize other nations for their mistreatment of women, and focus only on what happens in Western countries, because other cultures could take offense.
- Jimmy Carter who has been a relentless and virulent critic of Israel, sees nothing wrong with terrorist group Hamas, and has embraced their leaders as friends.
Reports by Breitbart, Military.com, and The Daily Mail
United States soldiers should tolerate all Afghan customs, even if they go against American moral values, suggested Col. Steve Johnson, referring to a decorated Green Beret who has been reprimanded by the U.S. Army for “striking” a child rapist in Afghanistan back in September 2011.
“You cannot try to impose American values and American norms onto the Afghan culture because they’re completely different… We can report and we can encourage them,” Col. Johnson told The News Tribune. “We do not have any power or the ability to use our hands to compel them to be what we see as morally better.”
The practice of influential men using underage boys as their sexual parterns, known as “Bacha Bazi,” is an illegal but common custom in Afghanistan.
Sgt. First Class (SFC) Charles Martland, the Green Beret, is expected to be kicked out of the Army by November 1.
Johnson’s comments drew the ire of
Army should not discharge Martland for standing up to the alleged rapist, identified as Afghan local police (ALP) commander Abdul Rahman. The incident took place in 2011 in the Afghanistan’s Kunduz province.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3205551/Decorated-Green-Beret-kicked-U-S-Special-Forces-shoving-Afghan-police-officer-raped-boy-12-beat-mother-reported-crime.html
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/09/01/green-beret-who-beat-afghan-man-over-childs-rape-faces-discharge.html
Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father.
Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand."
All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery.
Her report, "Pashtun Sexuality," startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked - and repulsed.
For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.
"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."
Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.
President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, from a village near Kandahar, and he has six brothers. So the natural question arises: Has anyone in the Karzai family been bacha baz?
Two Afghans with close connections to the Karzai family told me they know that at least one family member and perhaps two were bacha baz. Afraid of retribution, both declined to be identified and would not be more specific for publication.
As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior "was rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time."
He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. He was in his palace most of the time." He, too, declined to be identified.
In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime.
Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home.
A recent State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape."
So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth? And how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of Asia?
Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.
"How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful."
Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home.
A favored Afghan expression goes: "Women are for children, boys are for pleasure."
Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful.
One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?"
That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. It's not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren't in love with their boys.
Addressing the loathsome mistreatment of Afghan women remains a primary goal for coalition governments, as it should be.
But what about the boys, thousands upon thousands of little boys who are victims of serial rape over many years, destroying their lives - and Afghan society.
"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw."
As one boy, in tow of a man he called "my lord," told the Reuters reporter: "Once I grow up, I will be an owner, and I will have my own boys."
Source
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/brinkley/article/Afghanistan-s-dirty-little-secret-3176762.php
The Canadian army will conduct a formal review of whether its soldiers were ordered to turn a blind eye to the sexual abuse of boys by Afghan security forces in Kandahar.
A board of inquiry has been ordered by the army's top commander, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, said a brief statement issued Friday.
The allegation that soldiers were told to "ignore" incidents of sexual assault involving their allies was levelled by a military chaplain last June in a report to her brigade commander.
The chaplain, Jean Johns, said she counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier in late 2006 or early 2007.
The board will determine whether the army's response to the alleged incidents was "adequate, having regard to all circumstances," the statement said.
Johns, who counsels soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder, wrote her report in March, but had received no response until three months later when the allegations were made public.
Several other Canadian Forces chaplains say they have heard similar claims, but the Defence Department declined to investigate because no Canadian soldier had filed a formal complaint.
It's unclear whether an official complaint prompted the about-face.
Whispers of sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated by Afghan soldiers against young boys have been commonly heard among Canadian troops, with many referring to such incidents as "man love Thursdays."
But the evidence has been overwhelmingly anecdotal, with most soldiers telling embedded journalists they've never witnessed such acts.
There has only been one case brought to the public record. A Canadian soldier, who served in Afghanistan between September 2006 and February 2007 was quoted by The Toronto Star earlier this year as saying he heard an Afghan National Army soldier abusing a young boy and then saw the boy afterwards with visible signs of rape trauma.
The soldier, Cpl. Travis Schouten, now suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, the Star said.
Source
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/army-to-probe-whether-canadian-soldiers-ignored-afghan-sex-abuse-1.738145
Allegations that Canadian commanders turned a blind eye to sexual abuse of young boys by Afghan soldiers and police have been dismissed as unfounded by military investigators.
The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, which oversees military police, said Tuesday it has determined that allegations made by returning soldiers and the pastors who counselled them contained "serious discrepancies" and could not be verified.
"There's rumours and innuendos, of course, but there's no information to corroborate those allegations," said Lt.-Col. Gilles Sansterre, head of the investigative branch.
At least two soldiers have claimed they witnessed young Afghan boys being led into a Canadian forward operating base, where they were sodomized by Afghan troops and police.
"We interviewed a number of people that could provide us some information, and the bottom line is that testimony of some people was inconsistent and could not be corroborated by others," Sansterre said.
"We've been led to the conclusion the allegations are unfounded."
Maj. Kevin Klein, a high-ranking chaplain, has said publicly he warned commanders in 2007 about accounts of sex abuse that he was hearing from soldiers.
Another chaplain, Jean Johns, said she counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped and then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.
Despite their claims, Sansterre said military police found no evidence that the allegations were reported to the chain of command.
The investigation was thorough, and in the end there was no evidence Canadian military law was broken, he added.
The fact the alleged crimes happened in Afghanistan was a complicating factor in the investigation.
Sansterre said military police have jurisdiction over Canadian soldiers and civilians in the war-torn region, not Afghan nationals in their own country.
There wasn't even enough evidence to pass along to Afghan police for them to launch their own investigation, he said.
The allegations that Afghan soldiers, police and even interpreters sexually abused young boys while on Canadian bases in Kandahar also prompted a wider investigation involving a military board inquiry, which has yet to deliver its findings.
The NDP's defence critic called it an "unconvincing report" and accused the military of sweeping the matter under the rug.
"There's an effort here to close the file on this thing, and I don't think that's the right thing to do," Newfoundland MP Jack Harris said.
"It's pretty clear that these reports were passed on to the chain of command, and what we want to know is what was done about them."
Documents obtained by the New Democrats under the Access to Information Act show that after the allegations were raised in public, senior officers ordered soldiers to report any suspected cases of abuse so they could flag them for investigation by Afghan officials.
The troops, however, expressed skepticism to padres in the field that much would be done about it — citing the Afghan tribal code of justice.
Pashtunwali "is very different from ours [justice system] and enforcement is not very effective," said the June 2008 monthly pastoral report.
Source
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/afghan-sex-abuse-allegations-unfounded-military-police-1.836469
RELATED
Former president Jimmy Carter spoke with CBC Radio The Current this morning about his new book A Call to Action which tackles the subject of discrimination and violence against women.
He declined to denounce non-Western countries during the interview because it's a delicate subject and they might take offence.
He said the West should instead deal with its own problems first.
Read more
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2014/03/former-us-president-carter-talks-about.html
FORMER PRESIDENT CARTER AGAIN BLAMES THE JEWS FOR MUSLIM TERROR dismissing Islam's long history of VIOLENT CONQUEST and terror dating back many centuries, way before there was a Palestinian problem
Jimmy Carter is one of several top-ranking Democrats recipients of GENEROUS DONATIONS FROM MUSLIM SOURCES
Read more
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2015/01/former-president-carter-again-blames.html
Army should not discharge Martland for standing up to the alleged rapist, identified as Afghan local police (ALP) commander Abdul Rahman. The incident took place in 2011 in the Afghanistan’s Kunduz province.
Hunter, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, declared that the Army’s decision to dismiss Sgt. Martland shows the “moral decay” currently afflicting military leadership. Rep. Hunter told Breitbart News:
Martland’s experience shows the type of moral decay among certain aspects of military leadership—starting at the top. In fact, had he not intervened in my opinion, that should have been grounds for removal. At what point will Army leadership stand up for Martland for doing the right thing? Instead, they continue to hide behind a process that seems to makes most sense, in the case specifically, to an Afghan rapist who was happy to see Martland pulled from duty.
Rep. Hunter, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, has written three letters to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter asking him to intervene in the Army’s case against the Green Beret, for the purpose of granting him his wish to continue serving in the U.S. Army.
Sgt. Martland admitted “striking” the alleged rapist accused of kidnapping, chaining, and raping a 12-year-old boy and then beating his mother for pleading for help. The local police commander reportedly laughed about committing the crimes.
 |
| REP. DUNCAN HUNTER |
Rep. Duncan Hunter disagrees with Col. Johnson’s comments about U.S. soldiers having to tolerate all Afghan customs even if they go against American moral values.
“It is, in fact, a fundamental duty for our military to project American power, strength, and values,” wrote the congressman in the most recent letter addressed to Sec. Carter, dated September 1. “The ALP commander’s action was a human rights violations — and SFC Martland was right to step in and attempt to protect the child from further harm.”
Duncan also noted that Col. Johnson, in talking to The News Tribune, claimed the alleged rapist was “an inch from his death” after he was assaulted by Sgt. Martland and Quinn.
A cultural adviser and linguist who witnessed the incident contradicted those allegations, telling the office of Rep. Hunter, on condition of anonymity, that the rapist exaggerated the nature of his wounds, adding that the provincial police chief “strongly condemned” the alleged rapist and suggested that “he should be dismissed, arrested and put away.”
The police chief commended Sgt. Martland for confronting the Afghan police commander who allegedly laughed when approached by Martland.
Martland and his detachment commander, Capt. Daniel Quinn, lost their tempers when Rahman kidnapped a boy for more than a week, chained him to a bed, raped the child and then assaulted the boy's mother, Quinn said.
When they confronted Rahman, the Afghan officer 'laughed about it, and said it wasn't a big deal,' Quinn told the site.
The two soldiers then shoved Rahman 'to prevent further repeat occurrences', Quinn said.
Despite Rahman walking away only bruised, Martland and Quinn were disciplined. The Army reportedly halted their mission, put them in temporary jobs, and then, finally, sent them home.
Martland wrote in a January letter to the Army Human Resources Command that the incident was the third time during his deployment that he knew an Afghan police commander had done something morally repugnant.
The other two incidents were a police commander's rape of a teenage girl and another commander's decision to allow the honor killing of a 12-year-old girl after she kissed a boy.
Quinn and Martland "felt that morally we could no longer stand by and allow our (Afghan local police) to commit atrocities," Martland wrote.
Upon their return, Quinn quit the Army and secured a job on Wall Street, Fox News exclusively reports. However, Martland, from Massachusetts, launched a fight to remain a Green Beret.
When the 2011 incident occurred, Sgt. Martland was serving with an elite Joint Base Lewis-McChord unit. Martland, 33, was awarded two Bronze Star medals, including one for valor, during his time at JBLM.
Prior to the September 2011 incident, Col. Steve Johnson commanded Sgt. Charles Martland when he was the commander in the Army’s 1st Special Forces Group.
Last year, Martland, who grew up in Milton, Massachusetts, and played football for Florida State University, was listed as a runner-up for the Special Warfare Training Group Instructor of the Year.
According to another former teammate, who wished to remain unnamed, the soldier saved the lives of some of his colleagues during his time in Kunduz Province by leaping in front of Taliban bullets.
Quinn has since taken a private sector job in New York. Sgt. Martland is fighting to stay in the military.
Sgt. Martland is now facing involuntary discharge from the Army, which will take effect by November 1, it is reported.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Army and the public affairs office for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, citing the Privacy Act, told Breitbart News that the Army was unable to confirm whether or not the September 2011 incident is linked to its decision to remove Martland.
When Breitbart News asked for a comment on accusations that the Army had chosen to side with the rapist instead of Sgt. Martland, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, said, “The Privacy Act prevents us from releasing any additional information about the administrative action taken regarding this topic.”
However, several army officials - and politicians - have expressed outrage at the verdict, which they believe was made due to the negative mark on Martland's record from the January 2011 incident.
Former NFL defensive end Tim Bulman has also expressed support for Martland, whom he was friends with as a child, telling Fox: 'You would want him in your corner and protecting our freedom.'
Prior to the 2011 incident, Martland and Quinn had trained up Rahman, armed him and even paid him in dollars, it is said. However, they had a problem with him and other Afghan police recruits.
According to Fox, the two Green Berets and their teammates had started hearing reports of cops in the country carrying out rapes.
Sources
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/09/02/colonel-u-s-soldiers-should-not-impose-on-all-afghan-customs-including-child-rape/http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3205551/Decorated-Green-Beret-kicked-U-S-Special-Forces-shoving-Afghan-police-officer-raped-boy-12-beat-mother-reported-crime.html
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/09/01/green-beret-who-beat-afghan-man-over-childs-rape-faces-discharge.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Afghanistan's dirty little secret
Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father.
Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand."
All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery.
Her report, "Pashtun Sexuality," startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked - and repulsed.
For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it.
Islamic homosexual pedophile culture known as ‘Bacha Bazi.’
"Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."
Baghlan province is in the northeast, but Afghans say pedophilia is most prevalent among Pashtun men in the south. The Pashtun are Afghanistan's most important tribe. For centuries, the nation's leaders have been Pashtun.
President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, from a village near Kandahar, and he has six brothers. So the natural question arises: Has anyone in the Karzai family been bacha baz?
Two Afghans with close connections to the Karzai family told me they know that at least one family member and perhaps two were bacha baz. Afraid of retribution, both declined to be identified and would not be more specific for publication.
As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior "was rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time."
He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. He was in his palace most of the time." He, too, declined to be identified.
In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime.
Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home.
A recent State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape."
So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth? And how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of Asia?
Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can't even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.
"How can you fall in love if you can't see her face," 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. "We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful."
Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home.
A favored Afghan expression goes: "Women are for children, boys are for pleasure."
Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are "unclean" and therefore distasteful.
One married man even asked Cardinalli's team "how his wife could become pregnant," her report said. When that was explained, he "reacted with disgust" and asked, "How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?"
That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. It's not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren't in love with their boys.
Addressing the loathsome mistreatment of Afghan women remains a primary goal for coalition governments, as it should be.
But what about the boys, thousands upon thousands of little boys who are victims of serial rape over many years, destroying their lives - and Afghan society.
"There's no issue more horrifying and more deserving of our attention than this," Cardinalli said. "I'm continually haunted by what I saw."
As one boy, in tow of a man he called "my lord," told the Reuters reporter: "Once I grow up, I will be an owner, and I will have my own boys."
Source
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/brinkley/article/Afghanistan-s-dirty-little-secret-3176762.php
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2008 - Reports of Canadian soldiers being ordered to turn a blind eye to sexual abuse of boys by Afghan security forces
The Canadian army will conduct a formal review of whether its soldiers were ordered to turn a blind eye to the sexual abuse of boys by Afghan security forces in Kandahar.
A board of inquiry has been ordered by the army's top commander, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, said a brief statement issued Friday.
The allegation that soldiers were told to "ignore" incidents of sexual assault involving their allies was levelled by a military chaplain last June in a report to her brigade commander.
The chaplain, Jean Johns, said she counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier in late 2006 or early 2007.
The board will determine whether the army's response to the alleged incidents was "adequate, having regard to all circumstances," the statement said.
Johns, who counsels soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder, wrote her report in March, but had received no response until three months later when the allegations were made public.
Several other Canadian Forces chaplains say they have heard similar claims, but the Defence Department declined to investigate because no Canadian soldier had filed a formal complaint.
It's unclear whether an official complaint prompted the about-face.
Whispers of sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated by Afghan soldiers against young boys have been commonly heard among Canadian troops, with many referring to such incidents as "man love Thursdays."
But the evidence has been overwhelmingly anecdotal, with most soldiers telling embedded journalists they've never witnessed such acts.
There has only been one case brought to the public record. A Canadian soldier, who served in Afghanistan between September 2006 and February 2007 was quoted by The Toronto Star earlier this year as saying he heard an Afghan National Army soldier abusing a young boy and then saw the boy afterwards with visible signs of rape trauma.
The soldier, Cpl. Travis Schouten, now suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, the Star said.
Source
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/army-to-probe-whether-canadian-soldiers-ignored-afghan-sex-abuse-1.738145
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2009: Canadian Armed Forces accused of sweeping under the rug soldiers' reports of Afghan soldiers raping little boys
Allegations that Canadian commanders turned a blind eye to sexual abuse of young boys by Afghan soldiers and police have been dismissed as unfounded by military investigators.
The Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, which oversees military police, said Tuesday it has determined that allegations made by returning soldiers and the pastors who counselled them contained "serious discrepancies" and could not be verified.
"There's rumours and innuendos, of course, but there's no information to corroborate those allegations," said Lt.-Col. Gilles Sansterre, head of the investigative branch.
At least two soldiers have claimed they witnessed young Afghan boys being led into a Canadian forward operating base, where they were sodomized by Afghan troops and police.
"We interviewed a number of people that could provide us some information, and the bottom line is that testimony of some people was inconsistent and could not be corroborated by others," Sansterre said.
"We've been led to the conclusion the allegations are unfounded."
Maj. Kevin Klein, a high-ranking chaplain, has said publicly he warned commanders in 2007 about accounts of sex abuse that he was hearing from soldiers.
Another chaplain, Jean Johns, said she counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped and then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.
Despite their claims, Sansterre said military police found no evidence that the allegations were reported to the chain of command.
The investigation was thorough, and in the end there was no evidence Canadian military law was broken, he added.
The fact the alleged crimes happened in Afghanistan was a complicating factor in the investigation.
Sansterre said military police have jurisdiction over Canadian soldiers and civilians in the war-torn region, not Afghan nationals in their own country.
There wasn't even enough evidence to pass along to Afghan police for them to launch their own investigation, he said.
The allegations that Afghan soldiers, police and even interpreters sexually abused young boys while on Canadian bases in Kandahar also prompted a wider investigation involving a military board inquiry, which has yet to deliver its findings.
The NDP's defence critic called it an "unconvincing report" and accused the military of sweeping the matter under the rug.
"There's an effort here to close the file on this thing, and I don't think that's the right thing to do," Newfoundland MP Jack Harris said.
"It's pretty clear that these reports were passed on to the chain of command, and what we want to know is what was done about them."
Documents obtained by the New Democrats under the Access to Information Act show that after the allegations were raised in public, senior officers ordered soldiers to report any suspected cases of abuse so they could flag them for investigation by Afghan officials.
The troops, however, expressed skepticism to padres in the field that much would be done about it — citing the Afghan tribal code of justice.
Pashtunwali "is very different from ours [justice system] and enforcement is not very effective," said the June 2008 monthly pastoral report.
Source
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/afghan-sex-abuse-allegations-unfounded-military-police-1.836469
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RELATED
FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT CARTER TALKS AGAINST VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN BUT ONLY IF IT HAPPENS IN THE WEST
He does not want to offend non-Western sensitivities
Former president Jimmy Carter spoke with CBC Radio The Current this morning about his new book A Call to Action which tackles the subject of discrimination and violence against women. He declined to denounce non-Western countries during the interview because it's a delicate subject and they might take offence.
He said the West should instead deal with its own problems first.
Furthermore, Mr Carter said that we should not criticize Islam and other non-Western countries because this is a sensitive issue for other cultures, and that we should deal with our own problems first.
Read more
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2014/03/former-us-president-carter-talks-about.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Former President Carter sees no wrong with terrorist organization Hamas, and embraces their leaders warmly.
Former President Jimmy Carter embracing
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, as Mrs. Carter proudly looks on
Jimmy Carter is one of several top-ranking Democrats recipients of GENEROUS DONATIONS FROM MUSLIM SOURCES
Read more
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2015/01/former-president-carter-again-blames.html
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