Canadian boy held in Guantanamo from the age of 16

The results are plain to see...

It's probably not too bad for a couple of days, but 3 whole weeks??

That is one depressing video jeees i would not like to be that guy

Well that's just it. I HAVE tried it. I'm actually fairly well acquainted with sleep deprivation and getting turned into a zombie by it. That's why I question whether or not this is really "torture" by any reasonable definition.

That's why I keep wondering what the "other" treatment was while this guy was changing rooms. Because just moving cells every three hours doesn't seem that bad compared to say, what an infantryman would go through in his training.

The boy was definitely a child soldier, caught on the battlefield with a weapon in hand. The American soldiers certainly took him for a combatant in the field when Omar threw a hand grenade and they shot back, hitting him twice. The US itself labelled him an "enemy combatant".

Omar "attended a military camp that provided instruction on handguns, assault rifles, bomb-making and combat tactics." That sounds to me like being trained to be a soldier in the field. You realise that he was 2 years old when he was first taken back to Pakistan, and was indoctrinated his whole life.

So how is this boy some special case compared to other child soldiers in Afghanistan - those that are now being nicely rehabilitated?

source: CBC News In Depth - Omar Khadr

why are you using the word 'lasting'? Do you think it is only torture if there is permanent damage done? Causing excruciating pain or profound mental distress under your definition would not be torture if it were reversible after the event. I can tell you that is NOT the internationally recognised definition of torture. Funny, all us Europeans and Australians seem to be quite clear about that (along with one or two Amis) but there is a whole set of Amis on here yourself included with some very funny ideas of what constitutes torture.


The Pentagon confirmed he was sleep-deprived using the "frequent flyer" method for 21 days before being interogated. Nothing 'alleged' about it at all.

That wasn't what I was addressing was it? Sin said the dude is still a child. He is most certainly not still a child.


You bring up the Reich, You bring up the Shoah: the two are linked forever. You said the US is the closest thing to the Reich since the Reich. You called it the Reich. Muddy that. Again, if you bring up the reich and the Shoah at aleast be accurate. Otherwise, you are just being a drama queen. The Russians bled themselves white to push back the Nazi's in the east. 25 Million casualties earns them some respect. And then the Katyn Forest and the Prager Frühling earn them stark condemnation. After 1946, the Soviet Army was no longer called the Red Army. There was no Red Army in Afghanistan.


When he was captured, He was either building bombs for clandestine terror attacks or translating in what could be called an intelligence capacity. he was not an infantry trained soldier in the field. He was not trained to operate in a standing army. He was trained as a guerilla. He came from a family that had deep ties and high status within the Golbal Jihadi network. He is not just some rank and file AK 47 wielding teenager who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had indeed been trained and indoctrinated as a Jihdi since birth. Does that make him less dangerous? In your sources his brothers are quoted as having volunteered as suicide bombers. He was definetly more than some rank and file kid with a gun. Which was my point and frankly cannot be ignored. In this case, specifics count.

I agree that specifics count. So could you please be more specific and show me or better yet quote for me where "In your sources his brothers are quoted as having volunteered as suicide bombers." I can't seem to find it. What I did read was something a little different:


from CBC News In Depth - Omar Khadr

So the Father threatened his kids that either they should kill themselves or else he'll kill them. Nice Dad. But further reinforces the fact that the boy was forced into becoming a child soldier or suicide bomber, and not cherished as some sort of special genius 15 year old intelligence operative.

Yes. I really do. it's only 72 hours without sleep that qualify a person as legally insane, and while I'll grant he's getting a couple mins in here and there, as someone already said: waking him up every three hours, lights prolly on, knowing that the move is coming but not knowing when, and who knows how long the moving process takes. Two nights of waking up every couple hours on my own leaves me irritable and ready to bite someone's head off over nothing. 21 days? three solid weeks without a sleeping more than a couple hours at a time, and I'd be telling them whatever they wanted to hear just to get them to kill me and have done with it. The body needs sleep, and the mind needs rest.


Wow. I actually agree with djgrazy on something. I guess there really IS a first time for everything.

Hang on, you have now changed your story. First you say the torture takes place in the video, now you say it is just the results of torture. The wounds shown would be wounds from the firefight in which he was captured.

I'm not denying their link, like I wouldn't claim that the Third Reich and autobahns aren't linked forever, or that Volkswagens and the Third Reich aren't linked forever. Get a grip and stop pulling the old history card. The Third Reich is old and (thankfully) dead. We're dealing with a new world problem now. Your mentality is part of it.

By the way, you don't drive a VW on the autobahns, do you?

So I fucked up with the wording of the first post.

Get over it...

Haha. How handy for you.

Don't be an arse...

When you said:

And I caught you out:

And you corrected

I didn't become a dick about it either.

I meant that you could see that he'd been tortured on the video, not that you could actually see him being tortured on it. Like I said, I fucked up the wording - so what?

I think it is a terrible violation of human rights to lock up a poor misguided 16 year old juvenile, let alone torture him. Sounds like his upbringing was terrible, so it wasn't his fault he turned into a mad fuckwit, hellbent on destroying the evils of America and her allies.
It is such a waste of that poor boy's teenage years to make him play some strange variant of "musical chairs" and mvoe rooms every 3 hours. He probably had such a bright future ahead of him.
After capturing him, the US should simply have sat down with the lad and had an open and frank exchange of ideas to try and work out the cause of all his negative energy, and then perhaps given him some training in diversity issues.

If there is no lasting permanent damage, then where is the moral transgression? I'm not saying there isn't one, but I want to know where you see the problem. I didn't give a personal definition. I used the classic. What I feel isn't important. This is a societal standards issue.


Of Course. Here you go. CBS NEWS Here's a quote "Abdul Karim said he even offered to become a suicide bomber. "I told my father, 'Just give me a belt and I’ll blow myself up. I'll go and just do anything,'" he said.

As for his brother Omar, Abdul Karim believed he'd get out of Guantanamo and get even. "When he’s all right again he’ll find them again … and take his revenge," he said. "

I apologize. It wasn't the CBC, it was CBS.

Intelligence operative. That doesn't mean spy, and it doesn't mean cherished. It means that the Army views him as having worked in a capacity where he would have cycled through a lot of information. Which he did. As a translator. He and his brothers had been in Afghanistan since 1993, attending training camps with the Taliban and Al Queda,

"Some of the Khadr boys also went to summer training camps run by bin Laden, something Abdurrahman says all the Arab kids in Afghanistan did. "Going to the camps, training camps is, like, for kids here to go to a hockey camp," he says. "

They were not rank and file. Which was my point.


??? The Comparison that you made has nothing to do with the Autobahn or the VW. When you called the US the Reich, you were referencing the Nazi murders and brutality. You were referencing the Shoah. Don't back out now. You dug yourself such a lovely hole. You are the one who brought in the shitty metaphors amd melodramatic inaccurate historical comparisons. We aren't dealing with anything. Especially you. You are too busy venting your spleen.

Fine.

Have you had another think about how to get information out of suspects who won't talk yet?

Too bad you didn't include the very next sentence in that report:


Interesting that you quote Abdul Karim, who is Omar's YOUNGER brother. Back in 2003 during a firefight, the father was killed while Abdul was shot in the back and paralyzed. The next year, the mother took her remaining family, including paralyzed Abdul, and moved back to Canada. That would be enough to make any 14 year old bitter and angry, regardless of his upbringing. The interview you quote was done in 2004, when all the pain and mourning was still very fresh for that troubled young teenager.

You also neglected to mention that Omar's OLDER brother, Abdurrahman Khadr, has been working with the CIA since 9/11 woke him up and caused him to re-evaluate his beliefs. And the reason you keep saying that Omar wasn't a fighter but a translator must be because that is what Abdurrahman believes. It is his personal opinion as to why Omar was there.

I honestly don't understand your reasoning in terms of the training camps. If it is something that "all the Arab kids in Afghanistan did" like a hockey camp, then how does participating in a training camp make Omar so very special? Seems to be the opposite; that he was being brought up, trained and indoctrinated just like all the other Afghanistan child soldiers who are now being rehabilitated. And I sincerely doubt that translating instructions on how to make a bomb makes someone privvy to long term plans that would still be current 6 years in the future or even 6 months. The boy may be quite fluent in English, but his reading and writing skills were that of a young teenager who hadn't even had most of his schooling in English nor in Canada. And no translation would be required while leaders make their plans for the next strike and worked out their strategies.

You stated yourself in a previous post:

Guerilla warfare is extremely flexible and adaptible. Plans can be changed quickly and there's no way that Omar would have had any information that would still be valuable after all these years.

What is really shocking is the statement at the very end of page 2.


So even before any trial, before any evidence is presented, while everything remains as allegations and nothing has been proven, the USA can take any person (as long as they aren't a US citizen), label them a terrorist, and lock them up for the rest of their lives. Very frightening!

You're not making any sense. He wasn't an Afghan child soldier. Not a pashto speaker , not a dari speaker. They didn't pick him out of a poppy field hand him a gun and say, go fight the infidel, He was an egyptian Arab, an imported fighter living in the same Community as the Bin Ladens. His father ran a series orphanages and madrasas that raised Jihadis. He was raised by a highly influential Jihadi in the center of the Al queda movement. He was an Arab among other Arabs who consider themselves the elite of the islamic world.

You are barking up the wrong tree. I've said before that I don't understand why he is still in custody, other than the US probably has no idea what to do with him or wants to put him on trial for killing the medic.

From your comments I think your understanding of transnational networks, especially concerning Guerilla warfare, terrorism and international crime is about nil. You're guessing. Might be fun for you, but it's tedious for me.

If you are mad that the US is holding non citizens without a trial, then by all means, be mad. It's only quasi legal and it certainly is shady, and frightening as hell. Not the America I was raised with at all. If however, you want to make excuses for troubled Jihadi's, who have murder on their mind and death in their hearts, then I will personally spot you a one way flight to Kabul where you can counsel them, and perhaps show them the error of their ways. Let me know. I would offer a return flight, but you won't need it.

Thanks for the laugh! I suppose you think that's an irrefutable argument?! I could reciprocate but instead I shall endevour to side-step the mud-slinging match that you seem to want to begin. I'm in too good a mood today to lower myself to that level.

So what does this have to do with the topic of this thread, a boy who was captured at 15 years of age after being injured in a firefight where he (allegedly) killed a US soldier and injured another? And then imprisoned for over 6 years in questionable conditions. Oh, and by the way... Omar isn't an Egyptian Arab if you truly want to be tedious. He was born in Toronto, which makes him a Canadian Arab

I'm glad that at least when you return to the actual topic at hand, the "quasi legal" and "shady" and "frightening" way in which Omar has been treated over the past 6 years isn't something that you support.

he's only got himself to blame

Does anybody remember the McCarthy area:
McCarthyism

BTW: The jerk who started the entire BS died from alcoholism. Well there is justice after all. I guess he couldn't take his own stupidity any longer and had to drown it.
Joseph McCarthy

Please Glyndwr your ruin my dinner with comments like yours.

See, the problem is that you still assume that torture is an effective way of getting information from suspects. I disagree. So while I'm not sure what method I would use, torture wouldn't be one of them.

Here's an interesting article about it. Reputable source too - The Washington Post.


On top of that, here is a point nobody has raised so far:


Maybe establishing a rapport with a suspect is indeed the best way to get information out of them.

Hazza, the rapport thing is what I was getting at earlier in this thread:

My point was and still is that from the army's point of view he is probably not someone they would not just want to let go.

He was captured at 15, but he was acting in an adult capacity. He was shot up, and probably killed a man with a grenade. He participated in the making of bombs that killed others, or his translations enabled the network in which he was operating to kill other people. He lived, and was indoctrinated as a guerilla in a compound, the members of which, planned and provided financial support for the execution of the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, he was was indoctrinated under a regime in which women can be publically executed for showing their faces in public or speaking their minds. (Not the Ottowa govt , but the Taliban) He is not just some 15 year old kid who was playing his Xbox and got caught up in a war. It isn't that simple. It is not just "Oh my gawd, he's just a baby, let him go! let the child be free!!! Ohhh! My Womb...my bleeding heart, oh the humanity , what a world...(melt)" Every aspect of the case needs to be taken into account.

Even with all of that, I still think , due process and normal jurisprudence should apply. If you bothered to read anything I wrote, you would know that. It's a fucking awful situation. But oversimplifying it to a boy and his dog isn't exactly accurate.

All people should be equal before the law. He shouldn't get a military tribunal, those are designed to hang people. He should get a normal trial. But as I said before, if that means getting shipped back to Afghanistan for it, (which would be in fact the most 'legal' thing to do) it would not end well for him.


Wtf?


You are completely right. Especially in terms of effectivness and reciprocity. But what then consititues torture? Not by a societal standard, because just making them uncomfortable and not serving them tea with the milk in first will mortify Bell. What constitutes torture by a scientific standard? Because there is a difference between under duress, uncomfortable, under pschological pressure, under stress, and being beaten half to death. Where is the line?

Well finally, after hundreds of threads on all sorts of topics, we finally agree on something...

C'mon, do me a favour. I reckon if I was a captured US soldier, I'd much prefer a bit of sleep deprivation than having my head chopped off on Al Jazeera.

well I'd rather have my finger nails pulled off one by one than having my goolies put through a mincer. So what?

Give us an example of what you would consider mental torture?

Just so we know where your threshold lies.

Sleep deprivation is not torture.


Chicken and egg. Plus we would never behead someone with a penknife.

So, if the US sits down for a friendly chat with terrorist prisoners, the other side are gonna say "ooh, I say, the opposition is being rather cival. Jolly good, we'll do the same. Osama, fetch this nice soldier a falafel."

My arse.

So what would you class as mental torture then?

Not a lot - a mock execution is about as far as I would be prepared to go. As I also already said, long-term sensory deprivation is also a bit off.

the point is that our role should not be to exact retribution. It should be to be effective in undoing the organisation. And torture quite plainly does not achieve that at all. Torture also debases us and is illegal under international treaties our governments are signatories to. The abhorrent practices of terrorists debase them in the eyes of much of the world including within the islamic world. Us stooping to barbarity just makes us look as debased as our opponents, even if we are not.

long term sleep deprivation is a good deal more psychologically harmful than sensory deprivation actually.

I still wouldn't call it torture.

Really?? Well the UN must have had something in mind when they wrote this:


Also, I reckon I'd rather be subject to a mock execution, which might last a matter of hours, than 3 weeks of continuous torture which would probably have me wishing at the end of it that they would just execute me. In fact, in the video you hear the boy pleading with his captors to kill him...

You also haven't addressed the fact that torture is seen as ineffective by many senior US military staff - which actually makes the whole thing a moot point. Because whether you describe it as a "mild discomfort" or torture, it seems that this sort of technique doesn't work anyway - it just pisses a lot of people off and gives the US a bad name.

and how the F*** is that any different to what other 'child soldiers' do?

You missed the whole quote:
"He was captured at 15, but he was acting in an adult capacity. He was shot up, and probably killed a man with a grenade. He participated in the making of bombs that killed others, or his translations enabled the network in which he was operating to kill other people. He lived, and was indoctrinated as a guerilla in a compound, the members of which, planned and provided financial support for the execution of the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, he was was indoctrinated under a regime in which women can be publically executed for showing their faces in public or speaking their minds. (Not the Ottowa govt , but the Taliban) He is not just some 15 year old kid who was playing his Xbox and got caught up in a war. It isn't that simple. It is not just "Oh my gawd, he's just a baby, let him go! let the child be free!!! Ohhh! My Womb...my bleeding heart, oh the humanity , what a world...(melt)" Every aspect of the case needs to be taken into account."

and this one as well:
"You're not making any sense. He wasn't an Afghan child soldier. Not a pashto speaker , not a dari speaker. They didn't pick him out of a poppy field hand him a gun and say, go fight the infidel, He was an egyptian Arab, an imported fighter living in the same Community as the Bin Ladens. His father ran a series orphanages and madrasas that raised Jihadis. He was raised by a highly influential Jihadi in the center of the Al queda movement. He was an Arab among other Arabs who consider themselves the elite of the islamic world"

That would be a whole lot of differences from the average child soldier I think. He's not just a child soldier unfortunatly. His individual, personal experiences, who he met, where he went, what he heard, and who he killed and when, mark him as not just rank and file point and shoot child infantry man. Which is probably why the US sent him to Guantanamo in the first place and probably why they are holding him, especially since they couldn't get his Father.

I have to keep reminding myself when I read this thread that there are plenty of Americans who clearly know what torture is and abhor it. It would be too easy to conclude from this thread alone that the US contributors had an inhuman and utterly amoral disregard for human dignity.

Wow. How rich of you Bell!

"rich"? how so?

What would be "inhuman" about something that humans have been doing to each other since the dawn of time?

Well, Omar Khadr's very outspoken military lawyer thinks that he has been treated inhumanely. And he sums up very clearly what the consequences could be (bear in mind that the circumstances of his arrest and the basis of the allegations are not clear):


See Canada ignores ..., Guardian, 17 July 2008

and Interview with Lt. Com. Kuebler, CBCNews, June 2008:


His demand:

Can of worms though isn't it - if there are different systems for adults and minors, you get adults getting minors to do their shit for them, like kids acting as gophers for drug dealers in London.

For the record, I am not American.

To lock up a youth under such conditions is worse than for adults since at that age they are not as stable, more impressionable (i.e. will incriminate themselves). Also, this boy has spent 5 formative years being isolated, not being given an education.

As oppose to learning more about how to blow shit up, and how to pray to the sky giant 13 times day. Yep, he's missed out on loads of stuff, my heart fucking bleeds.

There is a different system for adults and minors and it usually works quite well. If adults get children to commit their illegal acts for them, then the adults are still held liable for that.

okay, some of the Brits too then. Maybe that should stop me falling into that trap of stereotyping