(MintPress) – Omar Khadr, the youngest detainee at Guantanamo Bay prison, was repatriated to Canada earlier this week to serve out the remaining time on his sentence. Khadr, the last Western detainee held at the secretive U.S. prison was just 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan after a battle with U.S. military forces. Khadr’s 10-year detention was in violation of U.N. laws that consider child soldiers “the subject of protection and rehabilitation,” not arbitrary arrest and incarceration.
Although Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo prison as early 2007, the president has yet to fulfill the pledge, a failure that many security and human rights experts believe imperils national commitments to human rights and due process of law. Although half of the remaining 166 detainees have been cleared for release, the process of repatriation has proven to be exceedingly slow and could take years to complete.
Additionally, critics charge that many detainees continue to be held without charge and are subject to torture and inhuman conditions, a situation that many, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, describe as an “abuse of human rights.”
Omar Khadr
Omar Khadr was injured in a battle with U.S. forces November 2002. Shortly after being captured, then 15-year-old Khadr testified in a sworn affidavit that U.S. forces tortured him during the early months of his detention.
After being sent to Guantanamo, the Canadian national of Egyptian descent told Canadian officials that his testimony to U.S. authorities was coerced. Khadr said that he bore false testimony because he was tortured by the American interrogators.
This claim is underscored by a recent documentary titled, “Four Days in Guantanamo,” revealing footage from a 2003 visit by a Canadian delegation. The officials attempted to confirm the information Khadr gave in previous testimony regarding his ties to al-Qaeia and other terrorist organizations.
However, upon further questioning, Khadr revealed that he had been tortured and subject to inhumane conditions while in U.S. custody. At one point, the Canadian youth pleads for medical care and and a transfer out of Guantanamo, saying, “I can’t move my arms. I requested medical a long time ago, they didn’t do anything about it.”
Damien Corsetti, former Intelligence Officer U.S. Army, commented on his meetings with Khadar, saying, “The condition of Omar when I first met him was pretty bad off. Looking at him you wouldn’t think he was going to survive. All I can say about him is that he was a kid, a typical 15-year-old kid; maybe raised a little differently than most of us but the child was still there. Thats what was prevalent in him was the child.”
As minors, former child soldiers are not held responsible for crimes under international law. Child soldiers are often victims of exploitation by adults, coerced into combat against their will. “Child soldiers are the subject for the United Nations of protection and rehabilitation, not of the same kind of treatment that would apply to those who commit those kind of offences when they are adults,” said Craig Mokhiber, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Khadr pleaded with the Canadian interrogation team saying at one point, “Promise me that you are going to protect me from the Americans.” The interrogators however, appeared more interested in extracting information about Khadr’s ties to terrorist organizations.
“This was Canadian agents participating in basically a joint venture to exploit this young man as a source of intelligence,” Lt Commander William Kuebler, Omar Khadr’s former U.S. military lawyer.
Khadr’s case is indicative of what the U.N. and a number of legal scholars say are violations of international conventions prohibiting torture and inhumane prison conditions. Additionally, the legal limbo of the prisoners has been described as a “black hole” by the English court of appeal and legal scholars familiar with the isolated conditions of Guantanamo, a facility maintained outside the U.S. and outside the purview of the law.
Closing Guantanamo
Barack Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay prison by executive order while campaigning for president in 2008. “We’re going to close Guantanamo. And we’re going to restore habeas corpus. We’re going to lead by example – by not just word, but by deed. That’s our vision for the future,” said Obama during the campaign.
During the Bush years, the camp housed hundreds of inmates who were subject to waterboarding, sensory deprivation, solitary confinement and other conditions deemed “inhumane” by higher courts. “America’s idea of what is torture is not the same as ours and does not appear to coincide with that of most civilized nations,” said a 2006 report published by the U.N. Commissioner on Human Rights.
Obama signed an executive order January 2009 suspending military tribunals at Guantanamo with the intent of closing the facility within one year. However, later legislation, including the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act placed significant restrictions on the transfer of prisoners out of Guantanamo.
Zachary Katznelson, a senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, believes that Obama still has the ability to close the prison and repatriate the prisoners, or send them to a third country for resettlement, saying, “President Obama has enough control and power that he can get these men out today if he has the political will to do so. It is a political decision.”
Indeed, although 52 percent of Americans believe that Guantanamo detentions adhere to international law, a similar majority supports changing the policies at the prison.
Additionally, 67 percent of respondents in the World Public Opinion survey said that U.S. treatment of the detainees “makes people in the Muslim world angrier at the United States and more ready to support anti-American groups like al-Qaida.”
The growing numbers opposed to the conditions at the prison also posit that torture and detainee abuses are inconsistent with international law and U.S. principles of morality. Former President Jimmy Carter commented in a recent New York Times Op-Ed, saying:
“With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as, ‘the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.’ This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people … It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’”