Israel appointed the Canadian military’s recently retired top legal officer Ken Watkin Sunday as an observer to an internal inquiry into its deadly raid on an aid flotilla.
The Ottawa resident ended his four-year term as a brigadier-general and judge advocate general of the Canadian Forces earlier this year.
The judge advocate general is the legal adviser to the governor general, the minister of defence, and the Canadian forces on matters relating to military law, and is also in charge of the military justice system. He is essentially a military attorney general, supervising legal officers in Canada and abroad.
Watkin is known for his involvement in the Afghan detainee issue currently making headlines in Canada.
A memo sent from Watkin to the chief of defence staff in 2007 was made public in February, in which he warned senior officials not to ignore allegations of detainee abuse. He advised officials that ignoring such reports was criminal.
Watkin was born in Kingston, Ont. in 1954, and educated at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University. He began his career as a legal officer in 1982.
In 1993, he was the legal adviser to a board of inquiry investigating the Somalia affair, in which a Somali teenager was brutally killed at the hands of Canadian soldiers.
He was involved in a number of investigations and inquiries from 1995 to 2005, arising from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Watkin was deputy judge advocate general of operations at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and during subsequent military deployments.
He is a published legal scholar and was a visiting fellow at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.
With files from Canwest News Service
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