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TechnoratiKhadr Video Released
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - The world got its first glimpse of a Guantanamo detainee this morning when lawyers for Omar Khadr released a video of the Toronto man's 2003 interrogation by Canadian officials.
Khadr is 16 at the time and still recovering from the injuries he received from his capture seven months earlier by U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. He is being interviewed by a senior spy from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and foreign affairs official Jim Gould, although the faces of the two Canadians have been blacked out.
An unidentified woman from the CIA is also in the room.
Khadr is at times despondent, and then inconsolable, as he takes turns answering the questions of his Canadian interrogators, followed by other periods where he refuses to look at them at all.
Copies of the entire interrogation, which lasts more than seven hours and fills five DVDs, will be released later Tuesday afternoon.
During one of the most poignant exchanges on the video, Khadr rips off his shirt to show the Canadians the area where he was shot twice in the back.
"They look like they're healing well to me. You know, I'm not a doctor but I think you're getting good medical care," the CSIS agent says.
"No I'm not. You're not here," Khadr replies.
Later he begins to sob uncontrollably. "You don't care about me, that's what," he says.
"Well, I do care about you, but I want to talk to the honest Omar I talked to yesterday," the agent notes, referring the first day of interrogation when Khadr answered questions.
As the Canadians leave the room, Khadr is seen holding his head, rocking back and forth, sobbing and repeating one phrase over and over. The quality of the audio recording makes it difficult to determine what he is saying, but it sounds like "help me" or "kill me."
On the last day of interrogation before the Canadians leave Guantanamo the agent tells Khadr: "You want to go back to Canada? Well, there's not anything I can do about that."
The Pentagon forbids the release of any videos or pictures of Guantanamo detainees and for years the Canadian government has resisted any requests by Khadr's lawyers to turn over the recording.
In May, lawyers Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney won a ruling at the Supreme Court that compelled the government to disclose the video of Khadr's interrogation and previously classified documents on his case.
Khadr's lawyers hope the short clip of the video posted online today will create an outcry in Canada and pressure Prime Minister Stephen Harper to demand that the U.S. halt their war crimes prosecution of Khadr, the last Western detainee still imprisoned in Guantanamo.
Ottawa officials had been bracing for weeks for the video's public release.
"I hope Canadians will be outraged to see the callous and disgraceful treatment of a Canadian youth," Edney said in an interview.
"Canadians should demand to know why they've been lied to."
Documents released by Khadr's lawyers last week raised questions about just what Canada knew concerning Khadr's treatment. Canadian officials have always publicly stated that they have "sought and received assurances" from the U.S. that Khadr has been treated humanely. But a foreign affairs document released last week revealed that Gould had been told that Khadr was subjected to a sleep deprivation regime the U.S. military dubbed the "frequent flyer program."
The practice is considered mental torture, according to international law and the U.S. Army Field Manual that governs military interrogators.
"It is shocking to learn that as far back as five years ago Canadian officials knew of the torture and ill-treatment Omar Khadr had experienced but did not intervene on his behalf," Amnesty International Canada wrote to Harper after the information was revealed.
While Khadr's case has received much attention in the past year, Harper has steadfastly maintained he will not interfere in the Guantanamo trial, a claim he reiterated last week.
In an interview with the Toronto Star yesterday, Gould also defended the decision to interview Khadr during the early years of his interrogation, saying it was the only way the U.S. would allow Canadians to view the detainee. While CSIS was interested in what intelligence Khadr could provide, Gould said he was there to report back on Khadr's wellbeing.
In a report to Canada's foreign affairs department, Gould described Khadr as a "thoroughly screwed up young man." "
All those persons who have been in positions of authority over him have abused him and his trust, for their own purposes," Gould said.
Although only 15 at the time of his capture, Khadr was seen both by U.S. and Canadian intelligence services as a prize captive because he was the son of Ahmed Said Khadr, who had ties to Al Qaeda's elite. There were three visits by Canadian officials in 2003 and 2004 before a federal court injunction halted any further visits to glean intelligence.
Khadr was captured on July 27, 2002 in Afghanistan following a firefight with U.S. Special Forces. He has been in Guantanamo since October 2002, when he was transferred from the U.S. base in Bagram, Afghanistan.
Now 21, he is scheduled to face a military trial Oct. 8 for five war crimes, including murder for allegedly throwing a grenade that fatally wounded U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer.
© Copyright Toronto Star 2008
24 Comments so far
Show AllOn the one hand we see that even people in countries that were smart enough to stay out of the wars aren't really much better than we are.
On the other hand we see what a country with a 3,000 mile border next to a rogue nation that bullies others at every opportunity must do to keep itself from being attacked and destroyed.
I'm not sure if this compliance is out of innate callousness or out of innate fear of the United States.
annabelle - I know what you mean, and I find those things satisfying to imagine myself. I also wonder what a person does to himself by indulging in that way of thinking.
I think it's a symptom of the times. We are bombarded with this kind of vengeful anger on every front, and turning it back against those who promote it, if only in thought, seems to make some kind of sense. But really, I don't think it does make sense. I think it just resonates with the harm being done. We've got to go beyond it.
One can only hope that sometime in the near future there will be poetic justice for all of those involved in making the decisions to "enhance" interrogation techniques. Even though these measures seldom produce concrete results, turnabout is fair play and perhaps a few pictures of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld naked in an ice cold room with vicious dogs straining to reach them would be good for starters. Throw in a water boarding incident just for good measure, after all we just want to get at the truth. Just to spice up the action add those who have gone along with these techniques (like Harper and Blair)and most of Congress. Somehow this mental image of 'justice' is comforting.
I love how the very first comment, the very first one, is of the familiar "it's a war they're killing us so we're killing them". Aside from the intellectual vacuum that you'd have to live in to think like that, it's infuriating that anybody could think something like that after watching this video, and particularly after the years of information we have that most of the detainees are innocent and that much of the torture is much worse than we've seen here. Add another nightmarish layer to it all by recalling that the US military (and its Canadian enablers) is notorious for serial lying.
And IF (note that it's a big if) Khadr did indeed lob a grenade at US soldiers, consider the situation: Those soldiers had invaded a country and slaughtered and tortured thousands of people who deserved no such treatment. Lobbing a grenade at those doing the destroying is a somewhat reasonable thing to do in such a situation. But I'll repeat the caveat: The US military is notorious for lying, lying, and lying again.
Want to thank the Toronto Star for running an article no major daily would likely offer down here. The media environment has been poisoned by our imbalanced media. Most Americans simply don't know what's going on.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM, accused operations planner for 9/11) had his children allegedly taken into custody:
"In September 2002, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's two young sons, aged seven and nine, were arrested. According to eyewitnesses, the two were held in an adult detention center for at least four months while U.S. agents questioned the children about their father's whereabouts." ( source) For what it's worth, my apologies go out for what our government has done to Khadr, Arar, and others we haven't heard of.
elmysterio has made all the critical points i usually make for Omar stories. Child soldiers are supposed to be treated as victims rather than perpetrators because it's uderstood they are not really responsible for being where they are, doing what they're doing. That Omar was victimized by his own family just makes his story more painful. What makes this case even more revolting is the way he's been targeted as a "prize" in the show trials line up. The kid shouldn't be there at all, and he's singled out from among all those other worst of the worst dudes. Makes you wonder what kind of charges they could bring against any of the other 30,000 detainees.
Some declassified documents on US torture techniques. Especially worth reading is the 1963 KUBARK manual- the techniques used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are all laid out here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122
zzz asked: "If we can see these tapes, why can't we see the tapes of the torture?"
Well, that's because these tapes are property of the Canadian Government... not the US government as they deal with interrogation by CSIS agents.
These movies are image management. Remember that Hilter's movies of Auschwitz didn't show us the whole story. Do you think these tapes do?
If we can see these tapes, why can't we see the tapes of the torture?
Mr. Harper, you're resignation is demanded.
NOW!
We all need to remember that the Canadian Liberal party under Paul Martin was also responsible for Omar's gulaging in Gitmo. Harper was in opposition(ie not the government) at the time, but fully supported/encouraged it.
The ND and BQ (I think) parties were against.
Two letters composed in Canada that express opposition to the Canadian government's Khadr policy deserve to be better known so I give the links here.
http://www.nightslantern.ca/law/omarkhadr13june07.htm
http://www.rightsofchildren.ca/pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Omar%20Khadr%20joint%20letter%20-%205%20May%...
EVIL BASTARDS! CHILDREN?! EVIL BASTARDS! Oh they will get what they deserve, all of them, including Condi and Powell.
Conservatives torture.
I've said this many times before, but it bears repeating:
1) The US IS the belligerent party in Afghanistan, and DEFENDING yourself against an invading army is NOT a war crime.
2) One 'Soldier' killing another soldier on the battlefield does not constitute war crimes.
3) Omar Khadr was a CHILD soldier at the time of the incident.
4) There is reasonable doubt that Omar even threw the grenade that killed the US soldier.
5) Omar has been TORTURED and mistreated by the Americans in violation of both the Geneva conventions, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which mandates special protection for child soldiers.
6) By refusing to intervene in Omar's case, Stephen Harper is complicit in torture and war crimes.
Return Omar Khadr to Canada IMMEDIATELY! Evil bastards.
YouTube video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc6Mblqzk2E
So, basically Harper seems to be enjoying kneeling to the US? I'll just bet he is!
Ottawa officials had been bracing for weeks for the video's public release.
Brace hard, you bastards! Your acquiesence and participation makes you no better than those who shot the kid in the back and then tortured him. You'd better not show your faces in my neighborhood. And yes, that IS a threat!
Just when will a majority of Canadians wake up and realize that we live in one of the most hypocritical countries on this planet, bar none? When will public indignation reach critical mass over the Khadr case (as well as over the environmental disasters visited around the globe by Canadian mining companies,and over the surrender to the U.S. of what little sovereignty we've ever had)?
Khadr was and is a Canadian citizen. His father, an old friend of Osama Bin Laden from their days as mujahedeen fighting the Soviet army (with U.S. support and weapons), moved the family from Canada (to where they had originally emigrated) to Pakistan and then to Afghanistan, where they lived in an Al Qaeda compound.
There, the current prisoner of the U.S. was raised and trained to defend not only the Al Qaeda compounds where he and his family lived, but also the Taliban government, who authorized Al Qaeda's presence on Afghan soil and which Khadr and his family had sworn to defend from foreign invaders.
Khadr was in effect a child soldier when he was wounded in battle as he defended an Al Qaeda fortification from a U.S. military attack. There is no absolute proof that he threw the grenade that killed the U.S. army medic; even if he had, he was engaging in what he had been trained to do in defensive action. And he was a child soldier at the time.
The bizarre label "enemy combatants" invented by the Bush administration to be apply to non-military personnel in undeclared wars launched by the U.S. can have no standing in international courts and certainly should have no standing in Canada. The arrest and torture and now the trial of a child soldier are also in violation of U.N. regulations.
The gruelling and gruesome interrogation of the 15-year old with gaping stomach wounds from U.S. gunfire, shortly after his capture; his imprisonment and the constant threats against him; his forced transfer to Guantanamo, an illegal offshore prison, and his continued subjection to various types of psychological torment should never have been condoned by Canadian officials.
The de facto complicity in an illegal process by the CSIS officers who interrogated Khadr on Cuban soil must be investigated further and condemned, with assurances that our government will never again conduct such operations.
Certainly, Mr. Khadr's situation was not helped in Canadian public opinion by his Palestinian-born mother and his sister, both of whom, in a CBC TV interview, praised Bin Laden and criticized the West while they petitioned to regain their Canadian passports, which had expired while they lived abroad. Still, whatever opinions his family members expressed about western societies, it is Mr. Khadr's situation in a grossly illegal situation that must be addressed, and he was and remains a Canadian citizen entitled to protection by our government.
One might be led to suspect that Mr. Khadr is being held hostage as an instrument to inflict suffering on his father, the Bin Laden associate, and on the rest of his militant family. Why should Canada participate in this vendetta?
Over 60% of Canadians are foreign-born; many hold dual citizenship, many reside abroad, and many still have family and emotional ties to their countries of origin. What happened to the young Mr. Khadr could conceivably happen to any other holder of a Canadian passport.
Perhaps Parliament needs to hold an open debate to define the parameters of citizenship, recognizing that under the current system, the Prime Minister's Office and various ministries are the ones to determine as arbitrarily as they wish who needs to be helped and saved from foreign prisons and who does not deserve to be considered a full citizen.
We Canadians need to recognize this case as a critical watershed in our evolving legal and political identity, and act to prevent any recurrence of this travesty.
Where is there justice in this treatment?
And how can we prevail without justice?
Every human being has the capacity to torture other human beings.
Torture has been used by the Bush Administration not for the purpose of acquiring information but for the purpose of identifying and enlisting sadistic criminals to do the Administration's bidding. Those who refused to participate refused with consequences including military personnel, intelligence agency personnel and others; some suicides resulted.
Not every human being who participates in torture is a sadistic criminal; some are just learning to make different choices.
Every human being knows that torture like murder is hard to undo. The best first thing a human being can do who has participated in torture is to stop participating in torture. The best next thing a human being can do who has participated in torture is to look for ways to mitigate human suffering, their own and that of others.
America's War Against Children!
khadr is charged with "five war crimes," stemming from a firefight with u.s troops on afghan soil.
the real war crime was the invasion and occupation by u.s. troops, absent a declaration of war and absent any afghan attack on the u.s.
this kangaroo court-martial's purpose is to obscure one glaring fact: the u.s. under bush/cheney has violated international law, and its own constitution, by waging two simultaneous wars of aggression.
and canada's complicity is a disgrace that no show trials can redeem.
Either we are at war and he is a war prisoner or we are not. If we are at war, then his throwing a grenade is no more a muder than our bombing , shelling or firing at him and his fellow combatants. Having two distinct definitions for the killing that happens during a war is the basest hypocrisy imaginable: they are murdering us, we are doing necessary killing.