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Omar Khadr: The Tale Of The Tape

By Alexa

The first footage of an interrogation at the military base, while powerful, doesn't show us anything we didn't already suspect. A 16-year-old sobbing teenager is not, needless to say, the image the Pentagon would like you to associate with its infamous destination for "enemy combatants."

Omar Khadr was a child of jihad, a teenage soldier in bin Laden's army. Captured on the battlefield when he was only fifteen, he has been held at Guantanamo Bay for the past five years -- subjected to unspeakable abuse sanctioned by the president himself.

Once, when he was being transferred, Omar learned that his brother Abdurahman was in an adjacent prison yard. Abdurahman, forced by the CIA to choose between life imprisonment and cooperation, had chosen the latter. Omar had no idea that his brother was in Guantanamo to spy on detainees.

"How are you? How are you?" Abdurahman yelled in Arabic. "How is your health?" Abdurahman yelled.

"It's OK," Omar yelled back. "I'm just losing my left eye and all. They don't want to operate on it."
From Human Rights Watch, 2004  . . . .

In the first UN-sanctioned inquiry into U.S. practices at Guantanamo, the rights experts also criticized the Bush administration for a proposed law they said might permit torture in certain circumstances.

The experts presented their report on Guantanamo and its 450 detainees to the 47-country UN Human Rights Council, a summary of which was released earlier this year.

"We note with the greatest concern that the government has not taken any steps to close Guantanamo," the rights experts said in a joint statement read by Algerian Leila Zerrougui, a specialist on arbitrary detention. "Indeed, a new block has been built and is set to open this month."

The United States responded by saying it would like to one day close Guantanamo, but first needs to find alternative means of protection from suspected terrorists, including Canadian Omar Khadr. It criticized the allegations as poorly founded and said detainees are treated humanely.

Just so we're all clear, Afghanistan was invaded illegally by U.S. troops, and responding to that invasion in self-defense was perfectly legal under international law, all this nonsense about "illegal battlefield combatants" notwithstanding.

At first, you might be outraged but not surprised by the treatment Omar Khadr received at the Guantánamo Gulag. Unfortunately, this has become business as usual in many U.S.-run detention centers around the world:

A DoJ memo containing the latest accusations of humiliating treatment of a detainee in Guantánamo Bay, included a description of an interrogation that started sometime after midnight in March 2003.

Khadr claims that military police officers handcuffed his hands and feet behind him in an interrogation booth at Camp Delta, then turned him into a "human mop" after he urinated on himself.

''Military police poured pine oil on the floor and [Khadr] and then, with petitioner lying on his stomach . . . dragged petitioner back and forth through the mixture of urine and pine oil on the floor," Washington attorneys Muneer Ahmad and Richard Wilson said in their memo, dated Dec. 30, 2004.

"Later, petitioner was put back in his cell, without being allowed a shower or change of clothes. He was not given a change of clothes for two days."

And the non-denial denials are routine enough too:

"We have an ongoing investigation into abuse allegations at Guantánamo," said Southern Command spokesman Raul Duany. "It will be premature to comment on specific incidents without having the results and recommendations of the ongoing investigation."

But here's the kicker. Omer Khadr, a Canadian, was just 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan. Fifteen. He's now eighteen. He's still there. We've locked up a fifteen year old, thrown away the key, and we're torturing him in the meantime.

Omar's family does have Al Qaeda links, most notoriously his father Ahmed Said Khadr who was was killed in Pakistan. Omar was picked up in a battlefield in Afghanistan. There are some allegations that he tossed a grenade that killed a U.S. medic but no charges have been brought. In fact, his lawyers are demanding that he be tried.

Let's just assume it's all true. (NB: There's not a shred of evidence to base that assumption on, for the record; there's exactly no "training videotape" as alleged at Omar's first ABR; further, there is evidence that "friendly fire" (Dios mio, the oxymoron) took the life of the soldier whose murder Omar has been charged with; si, claro, war crimes, I kid you not. Omar Khadr is charged with war crimes, a charge not prosecuted in this country since Nuremberg. Sorry, I know I tend to go off, but Nuremberg -- think about that for a minute.)

Assume it's all true. That he was a child-soldier from an Al-Qaeda family. That just makes him a victim under any understanding of international law, common sense or compassion.

A fifteen year old is not a fully competent adult. That's why they can't enter into legally binding contracts. You can't sue them in court if they promise to do some work for you but don't. That's why if an adult has sex with a fifteen year old, it's called statutory rape. Minors do have responsibilities and can be held accountable for their actions, but it always has to be done in a manner that provides their age.

The US government has said that all detainees are "treated in a manner appropriate to their age and status". If this is true, then the case of Omar Khadr indicates that an "appropriate manner" involves torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as well as denial of any form of justice.

NION Contributing Editor Lisa Lockwood has more on the Omar Khadr interrogation tapes here.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on July 16, 2008 (boomark / email).