The footage is shocking: Grainy film shows a slim teenage boy, hunched into himself under a spotlight in a bare interrogation cell. “You don’t care about me,” he tells his interrogators, again and again. After they leave, the ceiling-mounted camera records his racking sobs, just audible over the hum of the air-conditioner.
At the time of this interrogation in Guantanamo Bay in February 2003, the boy, Omar Khadr, a Canadian national, was barely 16, yet he had already been in military custody for seven months.
Now 25, he remains in the US detention center, though he will soon be transferred to a prison in Canada in a deal which led him to plead guilty last year to war crimes.
As far as the Pentagon is concerned, Khadr’s case is closed. However, a film about his interrogation, released in the UK this week, raises a series of deeply troubling questions. First, it asks, why did the US try a child, captured in Afghanistan aged 15, when UN treaties decree underage combatants be treated as victims? How reliable was a confession Khadr says was extracted under torture and, it emerged later, tacit threats of gang rape?
The film, Four days inside Guantanamo, is released in the UK today. It even casts doubt on the Pentagon’s claims that Khadr was responsible for killing a US soldier, the incident for which he was tried.
Dennis Edney, a prominent Canadian human rights lawyer who represented Khadr, says he remains dismayed by the attitude of the US government and that of Canada, which has repeatedly refused to agitate on Khadr’s behalf.
“When governments won’t stand up to this prosecution of a child soldier, who will stand up to it?” he said. “If you can’t protect the most vulnerable in society — which are children — then what is it that you do stand for?”
Khadr was captured by US forces in July 2002 near the eastern Afghan city of Khost following a fierce battle between US troops and militants into whose care the boy had been placed by his father, Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian-born aid worker who shuttled his family between Canada, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he was an al-Qaeda associate and alleged financier.
According to US military prosecutors, a grenade thrown by Khadr fatally injured a US sergeant, Christopher Speer. However, photographs which emerged in 2009 appear to show the boy lying unconscious in the compound at the time he supposedly committed the act. He was partly blinded and suffered severe back and shoulder injuries in the battle. He was taken first to the Bagram airbase, where interrogation commenced, and then to Guantanamo Bay.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in