Legal proceedings by the U.S. government against Omar Khadr earlier this week, along with the long horrible story associated with those proceedings, illustrate a great amount about how far our country has descended from the humane ideals that our government and most American citizens profess to believe in:
The capture and imprisonment of Omar KhadrOmar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was captured by the U.S. military in Afghanistan in July 2002 at the age of 15. The U.S. Army had surrounded a compound containing Afghani fighters and ordered them to surrender. When they refused, an intense bombing campaign commenced. Following the bombing, as U.S. soldiers entered the compound a hand grenade was thrown by one of the surviving Afghanis, and one U.S. soldier was killed. By the time the consequent firefight ended, Omar Khadr was the only Afghani fighter remaining alive. He was taken into U.S. Army custody, labeled an “unlawful enemy combatant”, and sent to a prison in Afghanistan. In November 2002 he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
Here is a picture of him:
An article in
Rolling Stone, titled “The
Unending Torture of Omar Khadr”, describes some of his ordeal. This is a small sample from the 9 page article:
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…
When he was not being tortured or held in isolation, Omar spent virtually every waking minute of his captivity at Guantanamo alone in his cell
The torture of children under the Bush administrationTorture of detainees held in prisons operated under the auspices of the George W. Bush administration
has been very common since Bush commenced his “War on Terror”.
Whatever restraints may exist against the torture of children, the torture of Omar Khadr is not at all unique in that respect: Just recently, Bush legal advisor
John Yoo argued publicly that there is no law that can prevent the President from ordering the torture of children;
video evidence exists of the torture of Iraqi children in our jails in Iraq; and former President Jimmy Carter discusses this issue in his book, “
Our Endangered Values” (page 119-20):
After visiting six of the twenty five or so U.S. prisons, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported registering 107 detainees under the age of eighteen, some as young as eight years old…. The international Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the Pentagon have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse….
Children like this eleven-year old have been denied the right to see their parents, a lawyer, or anyone else, and were not told why they were detained…
Legal proceedings against Omar Khadr demonstrate terrible holes in our “justice” systemAfter rotting in U.S. prisons for five and a half years, legal proceedings were held earlier this week to consider several charges against Khadr, including murder, attempted murder, conspiring with enemies of the United States, and providing material support to terrorists. These proceedings have thus far demonstrated several severe problems with the current U.S. system of “justice”, including the following:
Prosecutors claim that Khadr conspired with al Qaeda for five years. That would make him ten years old when he began his “conspiring”. He was initially taken to Afghanistan by his father. Government prosecutors have not even acknowledged the possibility that the association of a ten-year old boy with alleged terrorists may not have been completely voluntary. Prosecutors claim that under the
Military Commissions Act of 2006, our government’s military commissions have jurisdiction over alleged “enemy combatants” of
any age and that age provides no restraints against use of the death penalty.
The use of secret evidence (which the defense is not allowed to access) is another big problem with justice under the Military Commissions Act. Prosecutors claimed proof that Khadr had “murdered” the U.S. soldier noted above, by virtue of the fact that Khadr was the only Afghani survivor at the time that the U.S. soldier was “murdered”. However, a document that contradicted that allegation was mistakenly passed out to observers during the hearing on Monday. That document showed that Khadr was in fact not the only surviving Afghani soldier at the time that U.S. soldiers entered the compound.
This also exemplifies the absurdity of George Bush’s designation of “
unlawful enemy combatant” – a designation that he uses to avoid having to comply with
Geneva Convention requirements for the treatment of prisoners-of-war. The so-called “murder” of the American soldier was no murder. Clearly, he was killed during combat – vastly uneven combat that was heavily weighted in favor of the U.S. Army. Khadr was no “enemy combatant”. International law clearly designates him as a prisoner-of-war. The U.S. government was legally bound to provide him all the protections required for prisoners-of-war under the Geneva Conventions. But even if he could legitimately be classified as something other than a prisoner-of-war, the UN
Convention Against Torture mandates that Khadr should have received infinitely better treatment than he did.
Although an amendment was tacked on to the Military Commissions Act that prohibited torture, George Bush promptly signed a “
signing statement” that said he “will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security.”
The Military Commissions Act
allows the use of “evidence” obtained under torture prior to December 30, 2005, irrespective of the fact that experts agree that evidence obtained under torture is
notoriously unreliable.
Here is
a recording made by Amnesty International of a commentary on the above issues by one of Amnesty’s legal observers at Monday’s hearing.
Considering Khadr’s “war crimes” in perspective – comparing to the activities of Blackwater USAI find it terribly ironic and sad that George Bush’s government has charged a 15-year old (or 10-year old) boy with war crimes. Let’s consider some of the activities of the Bush administration’s favorite mercenary soldier corporation, Blackwater USA.
On September 16th, 2007, Blackwater forces protecting a U.S. State Department official opened fire on an Iraqi vehicle. The
incident is described in
The Nation by Jeremy Scahill:
Inside the vehicle was… a young Iraqi family – man, woman and infant – whose crime appeared to be panicking in a chaotic traffic situation… Gunfire rang out in Nisour Square as people fled for their lives. Witnesses described a horrifying scene of indiscriminate shooting by the Blackwater guards. In all, as many as 28 Iraqis may have been killed…
Blackwater’s version of events is hotly disputed, not only by the Iraqi government, which says it has video to prove the shooting was unprovoked, but also by survivors of the attack. “I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot,” said Iraqi lawyer Hassan Jabar Salman… I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus – he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him. She jumped out after him, and she was killed.”
Or consider Scahill’s description of some Blackwater activities during their response to Hurricane Katrina, from his book, “
Blackwater – The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”:
The company beat the federal government and most aid organizations to the scene as 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear spread out into the chaos of New Orleans… All of them were heavily armed – some with M-4 automatic weapons… What was desperately needed was food, water, and housing. Instead what poured in fastest were guns. Lots of guns.
In addition to its work guarding private companies, banks, hotels, industrial sites, and rich individuals, Blackwater was quietly handed a major no-bid contract… Instead of a serious government relief operation in New Orleans, the forces that most rapidly mobilized were the Republican-connected corporations…
A possibly deadly incident involving hired guns underscored the dangers of private forces policing American streets… The security guard said their convoy came under fire from “black gangbangers”… The guard said he and his men were armed with AR-15s and Glocks and that they unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. “After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped.”
As countless guns poured into New Orleans, there was a distinct absence of relief operations, food, and water distribution…
Well, you get the picture. No charges were ever brought against Blackwater for the civilian deaths in Iraq
or in New Orleans. A whole different standard of justice is used for Bush corporate donors as compared to 15-year old Muslim boys.
The U.S. Senate to vote on tortureThe U.S. House of Representatives recently voted for an amendment to the
Intelligence Authorization conference report that would require all interrogations carried out under the auspices of the U.S. government to follow the U.S. Army Field Manual with regard to torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. With the
recent confirmation of the use of waterboarding by the CIA, combined with the refusal of Attorney General Mucasey to admit that waterboarding is torture, a Senate vote that supports the House amendment is critical to stopping our continued use of torture. Therefore, Amnesty International urges us to “write your Senator and ask that he or she vote to end the use of interrogation techniques that amount to torture or ill-treatment.” Their
proposed letter or e-mail says in part:
Over the past six years, the images of torture, the government memos redefining torture, and the public debates about the legality of specific interrogation techniques that have long been understood to be torture have done irreparable harm to the United States reputation and leadership abroad…
Revelations of the destruction of videotapes of the interrogation of two “high value” detainees in 2002 by the CIA has renewed the importance of legislating the parameters of CIA interrogation techniques….
Congress has taken significant steps to restore U.S. leadership and rectify the U.S. practices to prevent torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by passing the
Detainee Treatment Act. I urge you to support this important provision to close the CIA loophole and ensure uniform interrogation standards for everyone in U.S. custody. This clear statement can begin to repair the damage done by the public debates about insidious forms of torture…
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