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Growing Up and In Pain at Gitmo: Omar Khadr Hearings

By Jeralyn

Canadian Omar Khadr was 15 when captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The child of Jihad was blinded in one eye and shot three times by U.S. soldiers. A very gruesome picture of him laying injured on the ground is here. Then he was questioned. He has vision problems in his other eye, and is in pain from the leftover shrapnel remaining in his eyes. Guantanamo doesn't have an opthamologist. Treatment, consisting of eye drops, is dispensed by an optometrist.

He was abused and subjected to torture during his confinement. He was used as a "human mop." He was threatened with rape and extradition to Egypt.

The U.S. is trying him in a military commission proceeding. This week, hearings are underway to determine if his post-capture statements were obtained via impermissible coercive techniques.
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The hearings were delayed when Omar refused to come to court yesterday, because he wouldn't wear sensory-deprivation eye-goggles that increased his eye pain on the short ride from his cell to the court. Today, he complained about a "waistband search" that according to testimony, involves a guard inserting a "digit" (finger) into the waist of his pants. Is this a sanitized description of a strip-search? Sure sounds like it, but maybe I'm too cynical.

From my earlier post which I quote a Toronto Star article, the link for which isn't working today." These incidents were revealed in an official report, according to the Star.

An hour or two later they came back, checked the tautness of his chains and pushed him over on his stomach. Transfixed in his bonds, Omar toppled like a figurine. Again they left. Many hours had passed since Omar had been taken from his cell. He urinated on himself and on the floor. The MPs returned, mocked him for a while and then poured pine-oil solvent all over his body. Without altering his chains, they began dragging him by his feet through the mixture of urine and pine oil. Because his body had been so tightened, the new motion racked it. The MPs swung him around and around, the piss and solvent washing up into his face. The idea was to use him as a human mop. When the MPs felt they'd successfully pretended to soak up the liquid with his body, they uncuffed him and carried him back to his cell. He was not allowed a change of clothes for two days.

The Toronto Star is also reporting prosecutors offered Omar a five year deal but he turned it down.

Obama's new rulebook for military commission proceedings arrived this week at Gitmo, hours before Omar's hearings were about to begin. (Full copy here.) The hearings will resume this afternoon after lawyers have a chance to review the manual. A few rules seem like nothing's changed since Bush.

For one thing, there's no credit for pre-trial confinement:

``The physical custody of alien enemy belligerents captured during hostilities does not constitute pretrial confinement for purposes of sentencing and the military judge shall not grant credit for pretrial detention.''

It also authorizes indefinite detention. Amnesty International says:

Like its predecessor – released by the Bush administration in 2007 – the new Manual for Military Commissions confirms that the current US administration, like its predecessor, reserves the right to continue to detain individuals indefinitely even if they have been acquitted by a military commission. Continuing to hold such a detainee after acquittal, the rules note, “may be authorized by statute, such as the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, as informed by the laws of war”.Thus the Obama administration has chosen to follow the Bush administration in invoking a concept of “global war”, essentially claiming that US counter-terrorism laws, policies, and practices in this area need be measured only against the law of war (and even then, only by vague analogy), to the exclusion of international human rights obligations.This flies in the face of judgments of the International Court of Justice and authoritative legal conclusions stated by the UN Human Rights Committee.

All of our coverage of Omar Khadr, dating back to 2005, is available here. I recommend starting with Life of an al-Qaida Wife. A Who's Who of his family is here. As a blogger named Jeanne D'Arc wrote about his family back then (no longer online):

Omar Khadr is as much a victim of these people as a member of the family. He's eighteen years old. When he was captured in Afghanistan, he was fifteen -- a child turned into a soldier by parents from hell. And our government's response to this victim of child abuse was to abuse him further.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 30, 2010 (boomark / email).