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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington07172008.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington07172008.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2>July 17, 2008<br><br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b><i>Omar Khadr's
Canadian Interrogations at Guantanamo <br><br>
</i></font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
<b>"Screwed Up" and "Abused"
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By ANDY
WORTHINGTON <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">A</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>s the Abu Ghraib scandal demonstrates, a
photo is worth a thousand words -- even if, as Errol Morris’
newly-released documentary Standard Operating Procedure demonstrates,
those words are sometimes what the viewer wishes to see, rather than what
actually happened.<br><br>
There is, therefore, enormous excitement in the media about the first
ever release of images from interrogations in Guantánamo: seven and a
half hours of footage from interrogations of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr,
who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight with US
soldiers in Afghanistan in July 2002. <br><br>
In February 2003, when he was still only 16, Omar was visited by
representatives of his home country’s Air Force Office of Special
Investigations. As has already been widely reported, the video footage
from these interrogations -- released to Omar’s Canadian lawyers, Nathan
Whitling and Dennis Edney, as the result of a decision in May by the
Supreme Court of Canada and a decision in June by the Federal Court of
Canada -- shows Omar displaying his wounds, weeping uncontrollably and
pulling at his hair in despair. <br><br>
Despite the excitement, however, documents relating to these
interrogations have been available for the last six days, and it’s my
belief that they demonstrate the confusion of a desperately lonely
imprisoned child without any of the dubious voyeurism that the images
bring, whilst also allowing a useful distance from which to appreciate
the general coldness and indifference of the interrogators. As Whitling
noted in an email accompanying the documents’ release, “The documents
paint a picture of a victimized and exploited boy.”<br><br>
The Canadian representatives interrogated Omar for four days, and in
three separate documents relating to the sessions they ran through the
lines of questioning they pursued, which were mainly to do with his
family history and his knowledge of al-Qaeda. Omar’s father, who funded
orphanages in Afghanistan, was also friendly with Osama bin Laden, and
Omar and his three brothers spent much of their childhood in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, on occasion sharing a compound with the bin Laden family.
<br><br>
Absent from these reports, however, is any detailed questioning relating
to Omar’s supposed crime -- the killing of a US soldier during the
firefight in which he was captured, the veracity of which has only
recently been exposed to scrutiny. Also missing are the odd flashes of
humanity that can be gleaned from the videotape, when, for example, one
of the interrogators attempts to calm Omar, who is clearly distraught, by
saying, “I know this is stressful.”<br><br>
These human touches are, however, overshadowed by the interrogators’
general indifference to Omar’s plight. As Whitling and Edney noted when
they released the documents, although Omar was clearly “suffering from
severe emotional problems connected with his detention and interrogation,
crying heavily on more than one occasion,” the Canadian officials
“dismissed his claims of abuse on the flimsiest of pretexts,” writing, in
one of the reports, that his allegations of torture at the US prison in
Bagram, Afghanistan, which have, of course, subsequently been verified by
numerous sources, “did not ring true.” <br><br>
The interrogators were also indifferent when Omar broke down after
describing how he was severely wounded in one eye during the firefight
that led to his capture. One report relates, “Khadr stated, ‘I lost my
eyes,’ indicating that when he was shot, it affected his vision. Khadr
put his head back in his hands and cried heavily. The interrogators left
him at this point.” On another occasion, another report states, “Khadr
has not received any letters from family since being detained. The
interviewers then provided Khadr with a letter, which had recently
arrived at Camp Delta. The letter was from his grandmother in Canada.
Khadr was left along to review the letter. Khadr was watched using a
video monitor and a one-way piece of glass. Khadr appeared to cry while
reading the letter. Tears were coming from his eyes and he was rubbing
his eyes and nose.”<br><br>
This might not be quite so worrying if Omar was an adult at the time of
his capture and interrogations -- although it would still raise
uncomfortable questions about Canadian complicity in the US detention of
a Canadian citizen in worryingly novel circumstances, held neither as a
Prisoner of War protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as a criminal
suspect facing a regular trial. <br><br>
Given Omar’s circumstances, however, it directly contravenes the terms of
the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to
which both the United States and Canada are signatories, which stipulates
that juvenile prisoners -- defined as those accused of a crime that took
place when they were under 18 years of age -- “require special
protection.” The Optional Protocol specifically recognizes “the special
needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or
use in hostilities”, and requires its signatories to promote “the
physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of
children who are victims of armed conflict.”<br><br>
Clearly, these requirements have not been fulfilled in Omar’s case, and
the Canadians’ complicity in Omar’s detention and interrogation also, of
course, make a mockery of the Canadian government’s insistent mantra --
that it would not intervene in Omar's case since it had received
assurances from the United States that Omar was being humanely -- which,
as Whitney notes, “has now been proven to have been an attempt to
misinform the Canadian public.”<br><br>
Also included in the documents released by Whitling and Edney, although
not featured in the videotapes, are notes from a second visit with Omar,
by Jim Gould of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, in March
2004. In a summary of the visit by R. Scott Hetherington, the Director of
the Foreign Intelligence Division, Gould, who regarded himself as “an
amateur observer of the human condition,” described Omar as “a thoroughly
‘screwed-up’ young man,” adding, pertinently, ‘All those persons who have
been in positions of authority over him have abused him and his trust,
for their own purposes. In this group can be included his parent and
grandparents, his associates in Afghanistan and fellow detainees in Camp
Delta and the US military.” Significantly, Gould also noted that, as
during the visit in 2003, Omar “recanted all previous statements,
including his confession to having thrown the grenade that killed the
American soldier.” <br><br>
Despite being rather patronizing about Omar, Gould’s statement included
riveting details of the US military’s treatment of Omar, explaining that,
“in an effort to make him more amenable and willing to talk” the
authorities had placed him on the “frequent flyer program,” the
euphemistic name for a program of prolonged sleep deprivation. “For the
three weeks prior to Mr. Gould’s visit,” the report continued, Omar “has
not been permitted more than three hours in any location. At three hour
intervals he is moved to another block, thus denying him uninterrupted
sleep.” Gould was also told that Omar would “soon be placed in isolation
for up to three weeks” and would then be interviewed again.<br><br>
Although Gould was critical of Omar’s US interrogator, noting that he
“seemed to be trying to intimidate Omar or force Omar to talk rather then
trying to cajole him into cooperation,” he was unconcerned about the
prolonged sleep deprivation, noting, nonchalantly, that Omar “did not
appear to have been affected by three weeks on the ‘frequent flyer’
program.” Four years later, however, on June 25, 2008, Mr. Justice
Richard Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada thought differently, and
ruled that this treatment constituted a breach of theUnited Nations
Convention against Torture and the Geneva Conventions. As Nathan Whitling
noted, without elaboration, “The Canadian government did not attempt to
appeal this decision.”<br><br>
The most distressing anecdote from Gould’s report, however, which,
bizarrely, he portrayed as an example of Omar “hav[ing] some feelings,”
followed a session with an interrogator from the Department of Defense,
who had shown him a photo of his family, only for Omar to deny that he
knew anyone in the picture. “Left alone with the picture and despite his
shackles,” the report continued, “Omar urinated on the picture. The MPs
cleaned him, the picture and floor and again left him alone with the
picture -- after shortening his shackles so that he couldn’t urinate on
the picture again. But, with the flexibility of youth, he was able to
lower his trousers and again urinated on the picture. Again the MPs
cleaned up and left him alone with the picture on a table in front of
him. After two and a half hours alone and probably assuming that he was
no longer being watched, Omar laid his head down on the table beside the
picture in what was seen as an affectionate manner.”<br><br>
This is an example of Omar “hav[ing] some feelings”? In my world, which I
hope you share, it shows a horrendously isolated and abused teenager
displaying mood swings that are symptomatic of extreme mental
disturbance. <br><br>
As Dr. Eric Trupin, who has conducted extensive research on the effects
of incarceration on adolescents, explained in 2005 after reviewing the
results of mental status tests administered by Omar’s US lawyers, which
followed three years of interrogations that began as soon as Omar was
captured, and which had a cumulative effect that the Canadians either
could not or would not consider: <br><br>
The impact of these harsh interrogation techniques on an adolescent such
as O.K. [Omar], who also has been isolated for almost three years, is
potentially catastrophic to his future development. Long-term
consequences of harsh interrogation techniques are both more pronounced
for adolescents and more difficult to remediate or treat even after such
interrogations are discontinued, particularly if the victim is uncertain
as to whether they will resume. It is my opinion, to a reasonable
scientific certainty, that O.K.'s continued subjection to the threat of
physical and mental abuse places him at significant risk for future
psychiatric deterioration, which may include irreversible psychiatric
symptoms and disorders, such as a psychosis with treatment-resistant
hallucinations, paranoid delusions and persistent self-harming
attempts.<br><br>
<b>Andy Worthington</b> is a British historian, and the author of
'<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745326641/counterpunchmaga">
The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's
Illegal Prison'</a> (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at:
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/">www.andyworthington.co.uk</a>
<br>
He can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:andy@andyworthington.co.uk">andy@andyworthington.co.uk</a>
<br><br>
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