So what's the big partisan deal about Afghan detainees?

Sounds pretty much like what the current government has been saying--from a Liberal horse's mouth:

Ex-Liberal defence minister says 2005 Afghan prisoner deal was best available

Former Liberal defence minister Bill Graham says a flawed 2005 agreement on the transfer of Canadian detainees to the Afghans was better than no deal and dismissed suggestions torture was a big concern at the time.

“In the end the agreement was not perfect . . . but it was the best we could do at the time,” Graham told an all-party parliamentary committee. The panel is looking into whether the Conservative government transferred prisoners knowing there a chance of them being tortured or sexually abused.

Graham told the committee that for one thing, there was no monitoring provision in place to follow up on the welfare of Canadian prisoners turned over to Afghan authorities.

“It was not . . . evident to us that there was such a substantial risk” of torture, said Graham, defence minister from 2004 to 2006. Even so, he added, the government and its officials had decided it was the Afghans’ responsibility once the deal was signed to see that prisoners were not abused.

“I cannot honestly say that we foresaw all of that at the time. We didn’t or we might have acted differently.”

The 2005 agreement was replaced with a new agreement in 2007.

Stuart Hendin, a University of Ottawa expert on armed conflict and human rights law [more here], said in an interview that he wasn’t buying Graham’s explanation.

“He should have known,” said Hendin, pointing to the fact the U.S. State Department’s report on Afghan human rights at the time clearly spelled out the risk of torture in Afghan prisoners.

Graham said there was pressure on the Canadian government to come up with a transfer agreement. It could no longer rely on the U.S. to accept Canada’s prisoners because of the controversy surrounding the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the U.S.-run prison in Baghdad...

Graham said even in hindsight Canada can’t be held responsible for prisoners being tortured once they were handed over to Afghan authorities.

“You can’t be responsible for what you don’t know about [emphasis added].”..

Graham said Amnesty International and the Afghan Human Rights Commission and even some Canadian non-government organizations were concerned about the conditions of the Afghan jails, but “it’s not the same as torture.”

“We didn’t know there was torture in the Afghan prisons, we didn’t have the experience of that,” he said. “Having signed the agreement we had every legitimate right to rely upon the word of the sovereign government of Afghanistan that they would live up to their obligations to Canada.”

Graham told reporters later it was generally agreed the deal with the Afghans for prisoner transfer “was the solution that we felt was the best possible one under the circumstances.”

And he added he didn’t accept allegations that Canadians were “knowingly or implicitly involved” in a way that they would make them liable for possible war crimes.

More--note the Globeite editorializing in what is supposed to be a news story:

Deal to protect detainees is flawed, former Liberal defence minister says
Agreement lacked follow-up provisions, Bill Graham admits
...
Mr. Graham’s testimony doesn’t absolve the Harper government of charges it turned a blind eye to torture for transfers in 2006 and beyond. But it does demonstrate how difficult a task subsequent Canadian governments have faced in handling suspects rounded up while fighting in a foreign nation at war with an insurgency...

Former CDS General Rick Hillier had a lot of time for Mr Graham--in comparison to his successor, Gordon O'Connor.

In fact, if the current government should have known about risks to detainees, that also goes in spades for the Liberal government:

Afstan: "Liberals feared Abu Ghraib-type detainee scandal: source"

Afghan detainees: The Liberal government was warned about possible torture/Rendition realities/Must-read Update