OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper says government lawyers -- not him -- are dictating what potentially explosive information is released on the issue of prisoners taken by Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

Responding to questions from Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, the prime minister told the House of Commons today that "tens of thousands" of pages of documentation have been released and none of it implicates Canadian soldiers in the torture of enemy prisoners.

However, those documents have been heavily censored and Ignatieff says the government's ignoring the will of Parliament and hiding the truth.

Opposition MPs contend Harper suspended Parliament in December to avoid answering sensitive questions on the contentious issue of whether enemy prisoners taken by Canadians were abused by Afghan authorities.

They confronted him on the issue the first chance they got, demanding the government turn over the unredacted documents in compliance with a parliamentary vote demanding it do so.

Harper says decisions to censor documents are not political ones but are made by government lawyers "in compliance with the law."