Khadr (born Toronto Canada Sept.86) moved to Afghanistan in 1996 when he was 9 or 10 before the 1998 embassy bombings.
He lived in Waziristan (Pakistani tribal area adjacent to Afghanistan) in 2002. In June 2002 (age 15) Khadr received basic firearms training and became a child soldier. His group fought against the Americans in July 2002. Khadr's side fired first, then the compound was bombed, strafed, bombed again, strafed a little more. more strafing and bombing... then the infantry went in to the rubble to mop up. That's when someone threw the hand grenade which killed American Sgt Christopher Speer. Khadr was one of the few militants captured alive. He was severely wounded and near death.
During Khadr interrogations/torture, he confessed to every American accusation. I believe Khadr's claims that his interrogators/torturers used his severe injuries to inflict pain during questioning.
...At Bagram, he was repeatedly brought into interrogation rooms on stretchers, in great pain. Pain medication was withheld, apparently to induce cooperation. He was ordered to clean floors on his hands and knees while his wounds were still wet. When he could walk again, he was forced to stand for hours at a time with his hands tied above a door frame. Interrogators put a bag over his head and held him still while attack dogs leapt at his chest. Sometimes he was kept chained in an interrogation room for so long he urinated on himself...
...Before boarding a C-130 transport to Guantanamo, Omar was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and hog-chained: shackled hand and foot, a waist chain cinching his hands to his stomach, another chain connecting the shackles on his hands to those on his feet. At both wrist and ankle, the shackles bit. The cuffs permanently scarred many prisoners on the flight, causing them to lose feeling in their limbs for several days or weeks afterward. Hooded and kneeling on the tarmac with the other prisoners, Omar waited for many hours. His knees sent intensifying pain up into his body and then went numb...
...While he was at Guantanamo, Omar was beaten in the head, nearly suffocated, threatened with having his clothes taken indefinitely and, as at Bagram, lunged at by attack dogs while wearing a bag over his head. "Your life is in my hands," an intelligence officer told him during an interrogation in the spring of 2003. During the questioning, Omar gave an answer the interrogator did not like. He spat in Omar's face, tore out some of his hair and threatened to send him to Israel, Egypt, Jordan or Syria -- places where they tortured people without constraints: very slowly, ****ytically removing body parts. The Egyptians, the interrogator told Omar, would hand him to Askri raqm tisa -- Soldier Number Nine. Soldier Number Nine, the interrogator explained, was a guard who specialized in raping prisoners.
Omar's chair was removed. Because his hands and ankles were shackled, he fell to the floor. His interrogator told him to get up. Standing up was hard, because he could not use his hands. When he did, his interrogator told him to sit down again. When he sat, the interrogator told him to stand again. He refused. The interrogator called two guards into the room, who grabbed Omar by the neck and arms, lifted him into the air and dropped him onto the floor. The interrogator told them to do it again -- and again and again and again. Then he said he was locking Omar's case file in a safe: Omar would spend the rest of his life in a cell at Guantanamo Bay.
Several weeks later, a man who claimed to be Afghan interrogated Omar. He wore an American flag on his uniform pants. He said his name was Izmarai -- "lion" -- and he spoke in Farsi and occasionally in Pashto and English. Izmarai said a new prison was under construction in Afghanistan for uncooperative Guantanamo detainees. "In Afghanistan," Izmarai said, "they like small boys." He pulled out a photograph of Omar and wrote on it, in Pashto, "This detainee must be transferred to Bagram."
Omar was taken from his chair and short-shackled to an eye bolt in the floor, his hands behind his knees. He was left that way for six hours. On March 31st, 2003, Omar's security level was downgraded to "Level Four, with isolation." Everything in his cell was taken, and he spent a month without human contact in a windowless box kept at the approximate temperature of a refrigerator.
When he was not being tortured or held in isolation...
Follow Omar Khadr From an Al Qaeda Childhood to a Gitmo Cell : Rolling Stone
I don't support torture, let alone torturing 15 year old children.
I also don't believe testimony Khadr while under duress is reliable. People will say anything to make the torture stop, not necessarily the truth. Even if nuggets are truth are mined by these methods... the end result is we become no different that the people we despise.
At one time, the US and Canada used to criticize other countries for abduction and torture. Did anyone else notice our leaders no longer do this?
I'd like to see a judicial inquiring into Canada's handling of this case, which sounds like a screw up since Canada first became aware Khadr was in US custody.
I'd like to hear Khadr's personal testimony in a court of law rather than his testimony obtained by torture.
Khadr should not be set free until a qualified Canadian mental health authority declares Khadr is not a threat to public safety.
