Defence minister apologizes to former comrades for claims about Afghan battle
OTTAWA — Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan offered a full apology to his former comrades-in-arms on Saturday, after claiming to have been the “architect” of Canada’s largest battle in Afghanistan.
The mea culpa, posted to Facebook, followed what some had seen as a half-hearted apology by Sajjan on Friday for comments he made in a speech earlier this month to a think tank in India.
“On my first deployment to Kandahar in 2006, I was kind of thrown in an unforeseen situation and became the architect of an operation called Operation Medusa, where we removed about 1,500 fighters, Taliban fighters, off the battlefield,” Sajjan said during his speech in Delhi on April 18.
Those comments, which were not improvised but part of a prepared speech for the event at the Indian think-tank Observer Research Foundation, reportedly sparked grumblings among some Afghan veterans.