Omar Khadr in Guantanamo Bay

InFront

From a human rights perspective and as somebody interested in the approach to counter terrorism at an international level, I have found this story both intriguing and disturbing, as I am sure many of you will have.

Others, undoubtedly, will be less sympathetic or concerned at the detention of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay, but it ought to make for some interesting dialogue nevertheless.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with his story, Khadr is a Canadian teenager being detained at Guantanamo Bay under some very dubious allegations, and his treatment there has sparked much concern and perhaps unrest both in his native Canada and internationally. If you want to read up on some background information, there is some available here. The Irish Times also published an interesting article on his detention recently, I posted an excerpt below for those of you who may not be able to access it.

The Irish Times, December 29th 2008
Disturbing details have emerged about the treatment of juveniles in the custody of US forces, writes Carol J Williams in Guantánamo Bay

TWO DAYS after he was pulled unconscious from the rubble of a bombed al-Qaeda compound in southern Afghanistan, 15-year-old Omar Khadr lay strapped to a gurney, his left eye blinded by shrapnel, gunshot wounds to his back still raw.

US agents who conducted the first interrogation of the Canadian teenager at Bagram Air Base near Kabul on July 29th, 2002, gauged the effects of their questioning by the blood-pressure meter attached to him, as Khadr, injured and inert, could do little more than grunt.

The latest, and possibly last, sessions of the Guantánamo war crimes tribunal revealed disturbing details about Khadr's treatment during three months in the custody of US forces at Bagram who were convinced he had thrown the grenade that killed a soldier.

Subsequent interrogations during more than six years in US custody have involved snarling dogs, his limbs chained in "stress positions", and his shackled body upended by guards and used as a human mop to clean the interrogation room floor.

Human-rights advocates consider the prosecution of Khadr another blot on the Guantánamo prisons and court. Neither was accorded the protections promised by treaties to which the United States is signatory.

"Under international law, adults who recruit children for combat are to be prosecuted for that offence. But the children caught up in combat are to be protected, not prosecuted," said Diane Marie Amann, a University of California, Davis law professor who observed the latest hearing in Khadr's case for the National Institute of Military Justice.

Kuebler said he was troubled by the mid-December hearing before Parrish, who refused to allow him to introduce as evidence photographs taken at the scene of the July 27th, 2002, firefight near Khost, Afghanistan, in which Khadr is charged with throwing the grenade that killed Sgt Christopher Speer.

The photographs taken by US soldiers as they stormed the bombed-out compound show Khadr lying face down in the dirt under the blasted remnants of a roof. The soldiers didn't know he was there until one stepped on rubble and felt something underneath give way.

Kuebler said Khadr could hardly have thrown the grenade that killed Speer if he was buried and unconscious when the Delta Force soldier entered.

Guantánamo supporters defend Khadr's treatment. The tribunal's prosecution chief, Col Lawrence J Morris, dismisses critics' contentions that juveniles are prohibited from being held accountable for war crimes by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in 2000 and a supplemental protocol two years later...

...Canadian politicians have long resisted calls to bring Khadr to his homeland for trial, though Kuebler hopes the impending change of US administrations will apply new pressure on Ottawa to demand repatriation of Guantánamo's last Western detainee.

So what do people think? Is the concern justified? How will history judge cases like Omar Khadr's and what does it say about the west and its approach to justice?

Personally, I think that this is a particularly brutal but characteristically unjust approach to creating some sort of 'justice' or acquiring information by the US military, and I think that by their atrocious silence in allowing this (and cases like it) to carry on, other international governments are also to blame.

brianthebard

TL;DR (initially).

To me its simple, no one should be in Guantanamo. But in the particular case of minors/children its particularly abhorrant that the US would have such disregard for their captives, and that the treatment is disproportional and wrong.

Who are the governments you feel are also to blame though?

InFront

Hmm yeah I might cut a bit out of the Times article... just thought it gave a good background to this.

On the issue of what non US Governments are also to blame, I would say that any democratic Government with close and warm diplomatic ties to the US who are in a position to exert pressure and do not, have a case to answer. Canada for example, the country of Khadr's birth and early upbringing has been particularly submissive, however countries like Ireland and other European states have only been putting forward superficial and weak requests about Guantanamo, and I would say that is a terribly negative reflection on them and their attitudes to human rights violations by the US.

brianthebard

Isn't Canada an ally in the war on terror?

I know Ireland hasn't done a lot, but they've offered to take in ex prisoners from Guantanamo afaik, which I believe is a valid and good action.
Tbh there's not much chance of international pressure ever causing a hegemonic power to retreat from its position, if the global consensus on kyoto, landmines, etc, can't force the US to agree then there's little chance of there being enough global pressure on the war on terror issue, since so much of the world is still split on it.