'You don't care about me,' Omar Khadr sobs in interview tapes WE ARE TORTURING TEENAGERS

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http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/15/khadr-tapes.html?ref=rss

'You don't care about me,' Omar Khadr sobs in interview tapes
Tapes reveal interrogation by Canadian officials


Video images show the Toronto-born Omar Khadr in the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The black dot obscures the face of his interrogator. (CBC)
A teenage Omar Khadr sobs uncontrollably as Canadian spy agents question him at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a brief video excerpt released via the internet early Tuesday morning.

The 10-minute video is of poor quality and the voices are often inaudible, as it was never intended to be viewed by the public. But it shows the Toronto-born Khadr, 16 at the time, being interviewed by Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials over several days in late February 2003.

The excerpt is from five formerly classified DVDs consisting of 7½ hours of questioning that took place six months after Khadr was captured following a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. Khadr, who is a Canadian citizen, has been held at Guantanamo Bay for six years on charges that he killed a U.S. medic during a firefight in Afghanistan.

The tapes, made public under a court order obtained by Khadr's lawyers, offer a rare glimpse of interrogations of Guantanamo detainees and of Khadr, now 21. The only Western foreigner still being held at the naval prison, Khadr is scheduled to go on trial before a U.S. military commission in the fall.

The U.S. Defence Department granted special permission to CSIS and Canada's Foreign Affairs Ministry to question Khadr after he was brought to Guantanamo Bay.

Shows wounds
At one point during one of the interviews, Khadr raises his orange prison-issued shirt to show wounds that he says he sustained during the firefight.

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1. Lawyers hope interrogation video will build public support for Khadr release

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jFB5xhVsx6Xz84JMNMTE4Gv3mdzw

Lawyers hope interrogation video will build public support for Khadr release
1 hour ago

EDMONTON — Lawyers for Omar Khadr are hoping a jailhouse video showing the boy calling out in despair after interrogation by a Canadian security agent will swing public support behind the effort to bring their client back to Canada.

"All we can do is put the evidence that we received out before them and let (Canadians) rely on their own particular sense of conscience," said Dennis Edney. "Which one of us would wish our children to be treated as Omar Khadr?"

On Tuesday, Edney and Nathan Whitling made a carefully orchestrated release of more than seven hours of video taken in February 2003 during four days of interrogation at the American-run Guantanamo Bay holding facility in Cuba. A short 10-minute "highlights" package selected by the lawyers was released in the early morning hours in time for morning TV and radio newscasts. The full package was released later in the day.

The video - made public under Canadian court orders - shows the teenager swinging from hope to defiance and then despair. He pleads vainly to return to Canada.

He was just 15 when he was found in the rubble of a bombed-out compound, in Afghanistan, badly wounded and near death. Now 21, Khadr is accused by the United States of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier and will face trial before a military commission in October.

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2. Secret footage of teenager's pleas exposes life in Guantánamo prison

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/jul/15/guantanamo.bay.video

The secrets of interrogation at Guantánamo Bay prison camp were broadcast for the first time yesterday in grainy footage of a teenage inmate calling for his mother and begging: "Help me, help me."

Yesterday's release of eight minutes of video of Canadian intelligence agents questioning a Canadian detainee, Omar Khadr, marked the first time the public has been able to witness the interrogation of a suspect at the camp.

It also offered a glimpse into the effects of prolonged detention and sleep deprivation on inmates at Guantánamo.

The footage surfaced on a day when the treatment of detainees in the war on terror returned to the spotlight in the US courts, Congress and Guantánamo itself.

In Virginia, a court ruled that the only enemy combatant detained on US soil, Ali Saleh al-Marri, who has been held in a naval brig since his arrest in 2001, had the right to challenge his detention in court.

In Guantánamo, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, accused of being a driver for Osama bin Laden, told a military court that he was held in long and repeated periods of solitary confinement and subjected to humiliation, with a woman interrogator brushing up against his thigh.

Meanwhile, Congress held inquiries into how the Bush administration reached its legal limits on the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, with testimony from the official who was once in charge of detainee policy, Douglas Feith.

At the time the video was produced, February 2003, Khadr was 16. He had been subjected to what guards called the "frequent flyer" programme, in which detainees are deprived of sleep.

In Khadr's case, he was prevented from sleeping for more than three hours at a time for 21 days.

In the footage broadcast yesterday, Khadr's despair at his indefinite confinement is palpable. He strips his orange prison uniform over his head, rocks and holds his face in his hands, weeping and begging for help. "You don't care about me," he tells interrogators.

Commentators described his indistinct moans as Khadr saying: "help me", "kill me", or even calling for his mother in Arabic.

The video, which the Canadian government handed over to Khadr's lawyers on the orders of Canada's supreme court, was the first sight of some seven hours of footage of his interrogation by Canadian agents. The images were recorded by a camera hidden in an air shaft as Khadr was questioned over four days.