House of pain: Canada’s connection with Kandahar’s ruthless palace guard
By Graeme Smith, Globe and Mail, April 10, 2010
To the Canadian soldiers who worked with them on a daily basis, the members of Brigade 888 were trusted allies, protecting not only the governor of Kandahar but a Canadian outpost located in his palace.
They and the man they served, Asadullah Khalid, have been gone for almost two years, but the city has yet to forget them. Kandahar is a tough place, but Mr. Khalid and his bodyguards are remembered as particularly brutal. The Canadians who knew them say they witnessed no abuses by the guards, but Brigade 888 was notorious among the locals.
People still speak in hushed tones about its torture chambers – the sleep deprivation and electric shocks.
A former palace official says he witnessed a prisoner hanging from the ceiling of a guardroom “trussed like a chicken.” A man who was among those detained says he endured weeks of beatings supervised by the governor himself.