One can only imagine what it must be like for an adult prisoner to endure US treatment at Guantanamo. But for Omar Khadr, who was sent to the facility when he was just fifteen years of age, his experience must have been all the more traumatic.
Today the Toronto Star released video footage of Kadr, then sixteen, being question by CSIS agents. In the video, which was secretly shot through an air vent, Khadr appears to be suffering from complete emotional detachment. When the agents leave the room, and he is left alone, his fear and extremely heightened state of anxiety remain visibly amplified, indicating that either, at the age of sixteen, he deserves an academy award because he knew he was being filmed, or that he was indeed so traumatically enveloped as to render him in such a state.
Legally, Khadr should never have been taken to Guantanamo. International law dictates that he should have been classified a child soldier and treated as such. Instead he was shipped off to the world’s foremost black hole and has been a prisoner there ever since, subjected to God knows what. If FBI documents released this year are any indication, entirely unethical interrogation practices were certainly on the menu.
Of course, your average ‘kill-em-all pundit’ thinks it all pathetic, that the video demonstrates that the CSIS agents that questioned Khadr displayed a semblance of compassion. But let’s remember one thing – they left him there. In fact, they, and the government of this country at the time, and currently, are just as complicit as those holding Khadr.
So what does that make us, exactly?
If you’re a Canadian that believes that this nation is not the sort of nation that stands shoulder to shoulder with those that have been responsible for holding individuals for years only to discover that many of them are innocent (see the McClatchy reports from June), despite the fact that they’ve been denied their rights under the law and international conventions while, at the same time, those holding them profess to be globally instilling the virtues of the rule of law, then you have cause for serious concern. Because that is not what my grandfather and two of my great uncles fought to defend sixty some odd years ago, and that is certainly not the nation in which I want to die.
I have traveled across this country almost seventy times, coast to coast, and seen more of it, and its people, than the majority of Canadians ever will. And I can honestly say, given my experiences, the acceptance, and even the participation, in such criminality is not what this country stands for.
If CSIS agents interviewed Khadr that means that our government has been complicit in condoning US detentions and all that they entail.
From the Toronto Star article…
“Documents released by Khadr’s lawyers last week raised questions about just what Canada knew concerning Khadr’s treatment. Canadian officials have always publicly stated that they have “sought and received assurances” from the U.S. that Khadr has been treated humanely. But a foreign affairs document released last week revealed that Gould had been told that Khadr was subjected to a sleep deprivation regime the U.S. military dubbed the “frequent flyer program.”
The practice is considered mental torture, according to international law and the U.S. Army Field Manual that governs military interrogators.
“It is shocking to learn that as far back as five years ago Canadian officials knew of the torture and ill-treatment Omar Khadr had experienced but did not intervene on his behalf,” Amnesty International Canada wrote to Harper after the information was revealed.”
While contacting the office of the Prime Minister is somewhat of a futile gesture given that complaints from actual citizens are routinely disregarded, the action itself, with regards to the belief that this nation’s government is still accountable to the people, is important. I therefore urge you to email the office of the Prime Minister about this affair. You can also contact his office by mail or fax at the address listed below…
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa
K1A 0A2
Fax: 613-941-6900