[Ppnews] Omar Khadr's Canadian Interrogations at Guantanamo

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington07172008.html

July 17, 2008

Omar Khadr's Canadian Interrogations at Guantanamo


"Screwed Up" and "Abused"

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

As 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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.

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:

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.

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the 
author of 
'<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745326641/counterpunchmaga>The 
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 
Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published 
by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/>www.andyworthington.co.uk
He can be reached at: 
<mailto:andy at andyworthington.co.uk>andy at andyworthington.co.uk




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