A prisoner leans against an entrance to the wing where political prisoners are kept at Sarposa prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan. (Dene Moore/Canadian Press)

Canadian officials delayed telling the Red Cross they had transferred prisoners to Afghan authorities, CBC News has learned, a situation that may have put detainees at greater risk of abuse.

Military documents obtained by CBC News detail the transfer of 35 detainees caught by Canadian troops in Afghanistan, beginning in 2002 and ending in April 2006.

In one case in January 2002, officials of the then Liberal government waited nearly 3½ months before notifying the International Red Cross it had transferred a detainee. In 2006, the length of time shortened to between four and eight days.

Richard Colvin, a former senior diplomat with Canada's mission in Afghanistan, says detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons were likely tortured. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

The documents appear to back up the testimony of Richard Colvin, a former Canadian diplomat in Afghanistan who said he delivered repeated warnings that prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities were being tortured.

Colvin said Canada's detainee system was flawed and the process in which federal government officials notified the International Red Cross of its prisoner transfers took days, weeks and — in some cases — up to two months.

The system of notification would bypass Red Cross staff in Kandahar and instead rely on Canadian officials notifying the Red Cross in Geneva, which would then pass word back to monitors in Kandahar.

NDP defence critic Jack Harris said the government's delay in notifying the Red Cross put detainees at risk.

“The lag is significant because the International Red Cross had a role in monitoring inside the Afghan prisons what was going on," he said. "They wouldn't be able to do that if they didn’t know a prisoner had been transferred over and was likely to be in jail.”

These revelations come as the Afghan independent human rights commission released a report confirming Afghan prisoners made as many as 243 allegations of torture in 2006 and 2007. Of those, 47 were alleged to have taken place in Kandahar.