Omar Khadr: At Long Last a Day in Court

by C. L. Cook

 

They will hear arguments and rule on whether the treatment meted out to Khadr violates his rights under international law and whether his incarceration is contrary to the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.

 

They will also hear arguments questioning the ability of American Justice to meet internationally required benchmarks for fairness in the case. 

 

 

The challenge comes as American authorities are in the early stages of the detainee's trial, (technically Khadr is ruled by U.S. authorities to be an "illegal combatant") for the murder of an American sergeant, killed during the battle that led to Khadr's capture.

 

Omar Khadr's lawyers challenge that charge and are requesting the release of Canadian documents regarding their client's capture and subsequent interrogation. Those documents remain undisclosed in any but heavily redacted form, but preliminary evidence indicates Khadr was not the only survivor of the engagement, as previously reported, so may not have been the one alleged to have thrown the hand grenade that killed Special Forces Sergeant Christopher Speer.

For their part, the U.S. Federal Justice Department filed against the Khadr motion, contending it was not the business of the Canadian court to rule on matters of American concern. The Canadian Supreme Court disagreed and will begin hearing testimony next week.

 

It is the second failure in less than a week for U.S. government lawyers trying the case; last week, during hearings of the Military Commission at Guantanamo Bay, a defense petition for the deposition of testimony of a Lt. Colonel, (identified only as, LTC "W.") present at the scene of Khadr's capture was deemed by the commission as admissible despite the prosecution's claim, under rule 702(c)3(a) of the Rules for Military Commissions, the testimony would make public classified information and so should not be entered for "good cause."

 

For Khadr it is the first glimmer of hope his nearly six year-long ordeal in captivity could soon be coming to an end.

 

Way back in the beginning, in the days after the twin towers fell in New York City, Omar Khadr was a Canadian teenager living with his father and brothers in Afghanistan.

 

Illustration by Matt Groller

 

Khadr's dad was a friend of Osama bin Laden, the man named by the Bush administration as being behind the heinous 9/11 attacks. Because the then-ruling Taliban regime refused to extradite bin Laden without compelling evidence connecting him to the crime he was being accused of complicity in, America launched a massive bombing campaign across Afghanistan, followed by a limited land invasion, fronted by U.S. special forces and various intelligence agencies.

 

No declaration of war was filed in the American congress, though international "sanction" for the U.S. retaliation, based on the U.N.'s Article 51, a provision allowing nations suffering "on-going" attacks from a foreign nation the right to self-defense, (decried as a specious interpretation of 51 by anti-war protesters)  "allowed" the launch of 'Operation Enduring Freedom.'

 

From his Madrasa, (religious school) in Afghanistan, Omar Khadr could not be aware of the frenzied diplomacy going on behind the scenes of America's impending invasion and he likely was not aware of the millions of people around the world marching and sending petitions to the American administration in efforts to dissuade Bush's predictably violent response, but when news of the invasion's commencement reached them, Omar's future was clear: He would be a soldier of the Jihad, fighting the infidel beside his brothers and father. 

 
The Taliban government had fallen six months before, its leaders scattered throughout the mountainous regions of the southeast of Afghanistan and into the so-called Tribal territories of north-western Pakistan, when U.S. forces reached Ab Khail, the small hill-town where Khadr and company were taking refuge.

 

As Jeff Tietz of Rolling Stone relates, U.S. forces spotted the fighters and sent translators into their compound to gain a surrender, but the translators were killed.

 

A ferocious aerial bombardment was ordered, and a firefight followed. As the Americans moved through the ruins of the bombed out compound "mopping up," a wounded survivor tossed a grenade, the explosion killing one of them.

 

Khadr was found seriously wounded, bleeding from two bullet wounds through his back and chest and shrapnel wounds to his face and eye. The diminutive fifteen year-old was later reported to have begged soldiers, "kill me."

 

But, the "sole survivor" of that day's fighting was not killed. Instead, Omar Khadr was stitched up and sent to Bagram Airbase.

 

Bagram is to Afghanistan what Abu Ghraib is to Iraq; the sprawling base outside Kabul having a dedicated detention and interrogation wing, where all the sordid methods made famous in Baghdad's gruesome monument to both Saddam Hussein's and his successor's brutality are too practiced against its hapless inhabitants, if only less reported. There, the child-soldier was "interrogated" as he recovered from his wounds, itself a violation of the Geneva Convention ratified by the U.S.

Khadr's defense has maintained their client was tortured, made to swear confessions for the killing of Sergeant Speer, and threatened with rape and other atrocities should he fail to comply.

 

The threats must have been an easy thing for the youngster to believe, as he found himself bagged, tagged, and sent off to Guantanamo's infamous Camp X-Ray.

 

Khadr's testimony about his treatment at the hands of his captors, made during March 2003 meetings he had with individuals claiming to be Canadian government officials, makes for chilling reading.

 

Khadr says;

 

• "I showed them my injuries and told them that what I had told the Americans was not right and not true. I said that I told the Americans whatever they wanted me to say because they would torture me."

Khadr then says;

• "The Canadians called me a liar and I began to sob. They screamed at me and told me that they could not do anything for me."

In 2005, the Canadian government forbade further interrogations at Guantanamo by their agents, claiming the prison failed to meet Canadian standards under the country's Charter of Rights and Freedoms; but, it has so far failed to secure, or even attempted to gain, Omar Khadr's freedom from the Guantanamo Bay facility, as both Britain and Australia managed to do for their respective citizens held there.

It is hoped now the Supreme Court hearings in Canada will shed new light on the great suffering of Canada's child-prisoner, while the order demanding delivery by April fourth to the Military Commission in Guantanamo of LTC "W.'s" deposition could clear Omar Khadr of the charge of murder that has seen him spend his teenage years confined to this century's equivalent of those abominable black holes inhabited by the enemies of Empire in times past.

And perhaps these two legal rulings are a signal it is time for the turning of stones; a time to shed light on the situations of all those other, uncounted 'Omar Khadrs' out there, suffering anonymously the depravities of America's new notion of justice.