Former special ops soldier says he was blacklisted for reporting alleged killing of Afghan civilians

A former special forces soldier is suing the federal government, alleging he was blacklisted by his unit and pushed out of the military after he denounced Canadian troops' alleged involvement in the killing of unarmed people in Afghanistan.

The soldier is also naming one current and two former top Canadian generals who he says minimized or failed to adequately investigate Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) involvement in the alleged killings.

Claude Lepage, a former member of JTF2, one of Canada's most elite and secretive military units, filed a statement of claim in Quebec Superior Court last week. He is asking the court to award him nearly $3 million in damages for the treatment he says he received due to his actions as a whistleblower.

The allegations in the court documents have not been tested and neither the Canadian government nor the Armed Forces have yet filed any defence. 

Lepage's statement of claim alleges it was his whistleblowing that led the military to hold two inquiries, known as the Sand Trap investigations, examining Canadian soldiers' actions in Afghanistan and the actions of coalition soldiers serving alongside them. 

It says he experienced "discrimination, retaliatory measures, abuse of rights, serious negligence and numerous violations of his rights … after having reported to his chain of command, the execution of Afghan civilians by members of his unit and by members of a foreign government agency."

A report stemming from the inquiries concluded Canadian soldiers did nothing criminal in Afghanistan. However, it acknowledged that they may have witnessed war crimes committed by coalition troops from other countries. A heavily redacted version of the report was made public in 2018. 

The report decried a culture of secrecy surrounding deadly missions in Afghanistan among Canada's special forces.

Lepage's allegations, now made public in the statement of claim, offer a window into acts of retaliation against unarmed Afghans by Canadian and coalition soldiers and raise questions about the actions of his commanding officers in the face of serious allegations of misconduct.

Between 2005 and 2008, while Lepage was in Afghanistan serving as a sergeant in JTF2, the court documents say he reported to his chain of command five instances of Afghan civilians or unarmed people being targeted or killed by members of his unit and members of another government military working on joint missions with the unit. 

The lawsuit alleges the first occurred in December 2005. After a JTF2 helicopter was shot down in combat, Lepage said a member of the unit fired an anti-tank weapon at a civilian residence and then conducted a "dynamic entrance" to surprise and intimidate the people inside.

Then, in May 2006, the morning after JTF2 soldiers were attacked repeatedly during a night operation, members of the unit bombarded several civilian residences, the document says. It says Lepage visited the destroyed homes afterward and met an old man carrying a bag filled with human remains. The man said the remains were what was left of his family.

In the lawsuit, Lepage said that to his knowledge there was no internal investigation into the bombings.

That July, according to the statement of claim, an unarmed man appeared at a JTF2 detachment in Afghanistan with his hands in the air, apparently surrendering amid an operation the Canadian military had dubbed "Bad Doctor." Members of the unit yelled at him not to move, but the detachment's commander then shot the man five times, killing him on the spot.