Six years ago Toronto-born Omar Khadr was fifteen years old and living in Afghanistan. He is now 21, and his place of abode is Guantanamo Bay, the infamous American terrorist prison on the coast of Cuba. He is accused of killing an American soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan in July, 2002; he was fifteen years old at the time. He was transported to Guantanamo at the end of 2002, after several months of detention in Afghanistan.
In February, 2003 the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) interviewed Omar for four days, but no information was released to the Canadian public. Finally, in a desperate move to inform Canadians about their client’s plight and, hopefully, to raise some sympathy for him, Khadr’s lawyers, Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney of Edmonton, obtained permission from the Supreme Court of Canada to release videos of the interrogation. The Supreme Court agreed to release the videos on the grounds that conditions in Guantanamo Bay violate international law and, therefore, any materials collected there and given to the Americans, must also be made available to Khadar’s defence team.
The films reveal a sixteen-year-old boy who is, at first, happy to see Canadian officials, afraid of further American torture, becoming more and more confused, and finally after four days of questioning, distraught that no help will be forthcoming. The CSIS agents who questioned Khadar accuse him of lying and changing his story, which he vehemently denies. At last one of the CSIS interrogators says: “You didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. You’re a very bright young guy and you see a lot and you talk to a lot of people and you’ve been in some very interesting places, and I think if you wanted to, you could tell us some very interesting things.”
He again accuses Khadar of lying to which the boy responds, “I’m not lying. If you were tortured like I was tortured, you probably would say more than what I said. You are not in my position. That’s why you are saying this.”
The agent tells Omar that what he is hearing is “like a rehearsed speech,” and Khadar should “tell me something that can help me, that can show my government that you’re willing to help us against a group of people who are bent on doing bad things to us.” “I told you the truth. You don’t like the truth,“ answers Khadar.
The release of these previously secret videos has caused both sympathy and animosity. Some people feel that Omar Khadar is exactly where he should be, while others believe that he should return to Canada and, if necessary, face trial here. What is rarely mentioned is the fact that, as a child, Omar should not have been arrested in the first place. Under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, on the involvement of children in armed conflict, a child is "every human being below the age of 18." International law also provides that any soldier under 18 is a child and is entitled to special treatment. Therefore, Khadar was a child at the time of his capture.
The American Defense Department, however, has created its own set of rules and has refused to acknowledge Khadar’s child status at the time of his capture. He was incarcerated with adults, he was not allowed educational opportunities, as required for juvenile prisoners, nor was he allowed access to an attorney until two years had passed. By the time he was allowed to see a lawyer, he had been incarcerated for a total of three years.
Omar Khadar is not the only juvenile held at Guantanamo. Two young men who are were also juveniles at the time of their capture, are also incarcerated there. El Gharani and Jawad have both attempted suicide, but were unsuccessful.
As his lawyers try to come to some sort of agreement with American authorities, the Canadian government is refusing to have anything to do with getting justice for Omar. Since the videos have been released, appeals have come from the Canadian Bar Association, jurists, judges, lawyers, human rights activists, and ordinary Canadians for some sort of resolution to the Khadar case . The response from Stephen Harper and his cronies is always the same: “Mr. Khadr faces very serious charges. The government of Canada has sought and received assurances that Mr. Khadr is being treated humanely. Any questions regarding whether Canada plans to ask for the release of Omar Khadr are prematgure and speculative as the legal process and appeals are still ongoing.”
In a Canwest News article originating from New York, U.S. navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, who is the head military defence lawyer for Omar, responded to Harper’s statement on July 17th, by saying that Canada has “strayed from …the dictates of international law over the plight of Toronto-born Khadar. You should stand up for the rights of a Canadian citizen, you follow the law, you do the right thing, you stop taking your order from the Bush administration.”
Lt.-Cmdr Kuebler is absolutely right. The documents released on July 16th, prove that Khadar has been tortured by the Americans at Guantanamo through sleep deprivation, to “soften him up” before CSIS arrived. At that time he was 17 years old – a child under international law. Prime Minister Harper has been hiding behind the statement that Khadar was responsible for killing an American soldier in a firefight in 2002. Steven Edwards quotes him in a Canwest article of July 11th as saying "There's a legal process underway in the United States. He can make hs arguments before that process, but frankly, we have no real alternative to this process now to arrive at the truth concerning the accusation against him, and we believe this process should continue."
This camouflage of double-speak may be soon ripped aside. On July 19th Omar’s defence team stated that it has expert testimony that the soldier he has been accused of killing was, in fact, killed by friendly fire. The 2002 incident was a “botched operation.” This new evidence, coupled with what was known about the firefight has enabled Lt-Cmdr Kuebler to put together “the first coherent version” of the episode.
In a report due to be released soon, one expert will testify that Speer’s injuries were consistent with the types of wounds that American grenade fragments would inflect. This opinion is corroborated by another expert. Investigators also feel that, though there were rifles, pistols, and grenades in the compound occupied by Khadar and other fighters, it was only the American soldiers who stormed the compound who carried U.S. grenades.
Keubler stated in the Edwards article of July 19th that “A war crimes investigator who examined the evidence, without prompting of any kind, offered his opinion that (it) suggested a friendly fire incident of some kind. A ballistics expert has expressed the opinion that Sgt. Speer’s wounds – based on photos and description-are consistent with the fragments expected of an American grenade, rather than a Russian grenade of the type Omar is alleged to have thrown.”
Isn’t it time, to use Lt.-Cmdr Kuebler’s words that Harper “stop taking your (sic) order from the Bush administration” and bring Omar Khadar home? He was a child when this all started. The Canadian government had no right to allow him to be put in Guantanamo in the first place; bring him home now.
