Video Of A Gitmo Interrogation
Video was released Tuesday of a February, 2003 Gitmo interrogation of a then-16-year-old detainee, a Canadian named Omar Khadr.
Amnesty International, among other groups, wants the Canadian government to ask the United States to return Khadr to Canada, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper objects. Khadr is now 21, and has been held for six years.
Khadr’s attorneys are saying he was tortured to get confessions and that Canada’s participation at Guantanamo Bay is a violation of the rule of law.
At one point during one of the interviews, Khadr raises his orange shirt to show wounds on his back and stomach that he says he sustained during the firefight.
“I’m not a doctor, but I think you’re getting good medical care,” the interrogator responds. As with all the agents in the video, his face is blacked out to protect his identity.Khadr cries, “I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything!” in reference to how the firefight in Afghanistan affected his vision.
“No, you still have your eyes and your feet are still at the end of your legs, you know,” a man says.
Between gasping sobs, Khadr tells the agent several times, “You don’t care about me.”
As Khadr continues crying, the agent calls for a break.
“Look, I want to take a few minutes. I want you to get yourself together. Relax a bit. Have a bite to eat and we’ll start again,” the interrogator says.
Khadr chants in haunting voice
Then Khadr begins sobbing with his head in both his hands, chanting over and over again in a haunting voice. His words are difficult to hear, but he seems to be saying repeatedly, “Kill me.”
The video is hard to see because slats from a ventilation grill block much of the shot. This is just a few minutes of a seven hour interrogation. You can see chest and back wounds that had not healed months after he was captured in Afghanistan. The video was made by the US military and given to Khadr’s lawyers by court order. Khadr, who is accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan in July, 2002, is questioned by Canadian intelligence.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=aQHFFbD_-Pg]
“I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything!”
Delivered in a flat monotone like he’s chanting religious verse. Gosh, maybe he’s speaking in metaphor.
From NY Times: “In all, about seven hours of recordings were given to Mr. Khadr’s lawyers, but the lawyers released a selection of only about 10 minutes of video recording on Tuesday.”
So this is obviously calculated to plead Khadr’s case in the court of public opinion. It certainly provides us with nothing on which to base a rational decision.
All it does is lead me to wonder why, in one portion of the video, Khadr is provided with the defensive psychological barrier of a table or desk, and whether these sessions were conducted by accredited interrogators.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Yeah, my heart really goes out for this guy. He was only in Afganistan on vacation, right? Wrong place wrong time. Yeah, mean Americans, cant trust ‘em.
July 15th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Oh Boo Hoo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr
July 15th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Just another ploy for sympathy by his attorney to have him removed to Canada. Poor little baby. The little Muslim prick lobbed a grenade at and killed an American medic. Let him sweat it out in gitmo and face a military court.
July 15th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
From the late, great Molly Ivins:
“War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were “German dogs.” They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds.”
They also had “Liberty Cabbage”, instead of Sauerkraut!
July 15th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Let them all face a military court. If found guilty hang them. Hanging prevents them from achieving martyrdom and molesting all those virgins wherever they may be. Sicko’s.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Its hard to tell on you tube video how bad the scars/wounds are. no telling where he got them,its not like there was a cop taking police reports out on the battle feild.Sometimes these kids beat each other and try to make it look like military brutality.
July 15th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
The Conservative said ,
Let them all face a military court. If found guilty hang them. Hanging prevents them from achieving martyrdom and molesting all those virgins wherever they may be. Sicko’s.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What if they are found innocent?
The amazing thing is that if this guy is COMPLETELY innocent; (he just so happened to live there, and was rounded in a sweep of ALL males in the area), and treated like that, it would be as bad as if say, the Russians invaded us, an did that to your son.
Bush supporters can’t get their heads around the possiblity that that could EVER happen,( although, I’m sure they would be calling Clinton a war criminal).
That’s why they HAVE to cling to the assumption that every one of these guys is a violent extremist.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
“War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were “German dogs.” They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds.”
They also had “Liberty Cabbage”, instead of Sauerkraut!
by OldLefty July 15, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Oh poor Lefty… are you being bullied? What a sissy.
You can dish it out but can’t take it. Just like Obama.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
What if they are found innocent?
Too bad for him then. War is hell for everyone.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Who said I was being bullied?
I’m not being bullied at all.
What are you talking about?
Those during WW1 who mistook kicking dachshunds for patriotism were the bullies, just as those who are SO scared, that they are willing to take a “kill em all”
approach….SO willing to do unto other what would be utterly unacceptable themselves…SO willing to become what they despise.
I’m sorry for you.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
What if they are found innocent?
Too bad for him then. War is hell for everyone.
by Vince P July 15, 2008 at 5:28 pm
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Not for people who just sit in their armchairs and watch it on TV, without engaging in any kind of critical thinking.
July 15th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Vinnie Pee…
July 15th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
[i]Too bad for him then. War is hell for everyone.[/i]
Tell it to this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilawar_(torture_victim)
Oh, right, you can’t, BECAUSE HE’S DEAD!!!
July 15th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
RC said-
“So this is obviously calculated to plead Khadr’s case in the court of public opinion. It certainly provides us with nothing on which to base a rational decision.”
EXACTLY, RC. Even if this man is totally innocent, I hope that people don’t fall over themselves with pity before figuring out why he is where he is. Islamic jihadists start young. It’s not inconceivable for a 16 year old to be involved in a terrorist group.
However, if this young man is innocent and he is being held without just cause, then I am absolutely disgusted and totally support his release.
I can’t google him right now… having laptop problems, wireless connection blinking in and out.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Lt.C. Ralph Peters on Omar Khadr Gitmo Tape: “We Should Have Killed That Punk on a Battlefield where it was legal to do so!”
Watch video at http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/07/ltc-ralph-peters-on-omar-khadr-gitmo.html
July 16th, 2008 at 12:59 am
the article in my local paper today doesn’t explain why Khadr is being held. it just relates details of the video.
i don’t like incomplete media reporting. it’s propoganda.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
OldLefty,
“What if they are found innocent” I wonder if you look as dumb as you are. If our military courts find anyone innocent they should be released. Idiot.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Conservative:
Are you mentally challenged? If the victims are “found innocent” after extensive torture causing irreparable bodily damage, we just let them go? What if they die as a result of the torture? Idiot!
July 16th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Who cares if they die.
It’s war.
Why dont you idiots care if we die?
July 16th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
here’s a follow-up to the link posted above by Joe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_response_to_Omar_Khadr
the Canadian people are divided about whether or not they want Khadr returned to their country to face charges in their own court.
it certainly appears that the US has just cause to hold him.
the only issue i have is if the torture he was/is subjected to exceeds what is allowed by international agreements.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Vince P:
If we killed him through torture and found out later he was innocent, then we killed an innocent man. And you’re the one who doesn’t care how many of our soldiers die. The liberals want to bring our troops home, while you can’t wait to invade Iran (along with the 2 wars we have going already). You’re the idiot!
July 16th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
OldLefty,
“What if they are found innocent” I wonder if you look as dumb as you are. If our military courts find anyone innocent they should be released. Idiot.
by The Conservative
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Until the latest SCOTUS ruling that YOU guys were on the fainting couch over, they never even charged them!
I know you would have had NO trouble believing this if it happened under Bill Clinton, but:
“According to Time,
Many detainees were kidnapped for reward money offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. ”
From McClatchy : (formerly Knight Ridder)
“But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo’s Camp Four who hissed “infidel” and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn’t: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.
“He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government,” a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.
An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.
Guantanamo became a school for jihad, or Islamic holy war.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Who cares if they die.
It’s war.
Why dont you idiots care if we die?
by Vince P July 16, 2008 at 2:49 pm
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One has nothing to do with the other.
Don’t you care more about innocent people than the terrorists?
July 16th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
From NYT:
China Inspired Interrogations at
Guantánamo
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 2, 2008
What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.
The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003.
Congratulations!!!
You have come full circle and have become what you most hate!
July 16th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
This video is having a powerful impact.. Now Glenn Beck is calling for gitmo to be closed:
GLENN: Cut the music off for just a second. I want to set the tone here for this and I want you to know if you have children in the car with you that you should turn the radio off just for a few minutes because what you are about to hear is extraordinarily shocking. It is quite frankly makes me rethink my position. You know that I am a supporter of Guantanamo. I am somebody who supports not torture and, you know, hey, just everybody let’s go torture people. But in a situation like you see on “24″ where we think that there is a nuke in a city and we have some people that we think have some information and there is a time, a ticking clock. You know what? I have quite honestly, up until now, been for it. And then this video and audio is released. Can we put enough disclaimers on this in the newsletter today, Dan? I don’t want to include this in the newsletter at GlennBeck.com unless it has explicit warnings.
DAN: Well, we can do the same thing we did, if you remember with the severed head photo that we — we can do the similar setup of that.
GLENN: I want something that has a significant warning on this because this is describing what happened to one prisoner in Guantanamo. This is actual audio of the torture that was happening again. This is — I am not making this up. This is a 21-year-old that went to Guantanamo at 16 because he threw a hand grenade and killed a U.S. soldier and this is the audio just released at Guantanamo. It is not for the fainthearted. I think I’ve given it enough warning. Here it is.
(Audio playing).
GLENN: Okay, stop for just a sec. Stu, can you translate here? What is he saying?
STU: He’s saying, Dan, I think has the –
DAN: I don’t think it’s the exact transcript but basically what he’s saying is he’s lifting up his shirt and saying wounds he received in Afghanistan but he has not received medical and he’s been asking for medical and he’s just not getting the medical help. He’s not healing well.
GLENN: I’m going to try to go back in and listen some more. Go ahead.
(Audio plays).
GLENN: Stop just a second. The voice there is of a foreigner. He’s a Canadian and one of the damn people who are torturing this man relentlessly. As you now hear the victim received wounds in Afghanistan and has not received medical treatment. And you can see the nonopen, nonseemingly wounded man there with his shirt up. And then you hear the interrogator say, “I’m not a doctor, but it looks like you’re doing fine.” And then it continues.
(Audio plays.)
GLENN: He’s crying. Do you hear him crying? Stop, stop, stop. Hear the Guantanamo victim. Thank God that those who are against Guantanamo have released this audio. By the way, that’s important to know it’s not our government releasing this audio. This is from a hidden camera. Thank goodness somebody took a hidden camera. Now, now we hear the victim say, I have no eyes, I’ve lost my eyes. And it gets worse from there.
(Audio plays).
GLENN: Stop. Stop, did you hear that? “I’ve lost my eyes. I’ve lost my feet.’ We have poked this man’s eyes out and cut off his feet. And what does the interrogator say?
(Audio plays).
GLENN: Stop, stop. Trying to make it sound like those eyes that are in his head are the eyes that he started with and the feet that he has weren’t cut off, weren’t some sort of governmental plastic feet but the actual feet that God gave him — sorry, Allah gave him — and what does he say? No, your feet are still there, your eyes are still there, only to hear the pore torture victim say, “No, no, they’re not.” How long is this going to continue. How do we live with our self? How do we tell people that they have eyes when they clearly know they don’t have eyes? When we say, you’ve got feet. Look, I can see your feet, everybody can see the feet, look, it’s going to be on the hidden video. You’ve got feet. Look at your feet. And they know they don’t have feet. How much longer will this country tell people with feet that don’t believe they have feet that they have feet! I hope somebody in the media, I hope, damn it, somebody in the media will cover this.
VOICE: Tonight on frontline you’ve heard the shocking allegations from Guantanamo Bay but you haven’t heard them all. Frontline’s latest investigation reveals the most shocking allegations yet, so shocking it will shock your body to the core and leave you in a state of… shock. Not only did guards on several occasions refuse to smile at the terrorist prisoners, they even gazed at them with apparent disdain. Nutrition is also being denied. Frontline interviews prisoners whose repeated requests for a large box of doughnut holes from the local Dunkin’ Donuts fell on deaf ears even though the officers’ records indicate they can hear just fine. Frontline learned that many times they even asked with a polite, “Pretty please.” Perhaps the most shocking revelation of all is the fact that this blatant disregard for human rights is seeping out of Guantanamo Bay and dripping back into the United States. Frontline has exclusive videotape evidence of police officers in uniform and off duty not being overly friendly. That’s right, some of the video clips even show these so-called protectors of peace not holding doors, failing to use a blinker signal and almost littering. It’s all coming out.
Plus, more torture on the home front. How secret government covert agents are planning to torture tens of thousands of people in 350 movie theatres nationwide tomorrow. How will they do it? Hint: With a pasty wide loud mouth conservative talk host who boasts a proclivity for fatty foods and the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It’s all tonight on Frontline.
July 16th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I believe this kid and his attorney. Just like I trust terrorists, Canadians, lawyers, and con artist. Oh wait I DON’T.
July 16th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
I believe this kid and his attorney. Just like I trust terrorists, Canadians, lawyers, and con artist. Oh wait I DON’T.
by Karma July 16, 2008 at 7:24 pm
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Bet you’d believe him if it happened under Bill Clinton, and the right was calling him a war criminal.
July 16th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
As an aside , for any prophecy/mystism junkies out there, i recommend this audio show
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nocompromise/2008/06/21/No-Compromise-Radio-Right-Radio-for-Right-Listeners-
It’s an interview wiht Joel Richardson, a Christian, who was heavily involved with Muslim interfaith diaglog… who over time working with Muslims realized that the Messiah that the Muslims are waiting for (The Mahdi) is described as the Antichrist in the BIble.
Since then he wrote three books
Antichrist: Islam’s Awaited Messiah
Why We Left Islam
and
God’s War on Terror
July 16th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
So we have Muslim AND Christian wackadoodles!
MY voodoo good….YOUR voodoo bad!
July 16th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Where’s the “powerful impact” in this video? It’s a normal interogation. Where’s the abuse? I don’t hear or see any at all.
July 17th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
OldLefty,
It might surprise you but no. I don’t trust anyone who is Islamic because I have made that mistake too many times in the past. I try and learn from them. No I don’t trust ANY lawyer either.
July 17th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Well, Salim Hamdan lost his effort in federal court. He’ll be faceing a military court. Booyah.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Before this piece of crap is released onto the world he should be sterlized so that he is prevented from multiplying his deranged gene pool. While the US Medical Corps are at it they might as well sever his Achilles tendons and amputate his trigger fingers from both hands. It is likely that if this is not done he will just reappear on the battlefield attempting to kill our beloved soldiers. My only regret is that according to the Pentagon I’m too old to kill those like such as he in the mountains of Afghanistan and the deserts of Iraq. I would do it for free seeing that I’m now retired and have extensive experience in firearms and that type of employment. Oh! to be young again and having no real plans for my near future nor children I would gladly provide this service for MY beloved country. Remember while at war the only good enemy is a dead enemy and the United States should be paying bonuses to our fighting men and women for each kill and may I suggest to keep the accounting staight they should be severing right ears or testicles from killed enemy combatants in order to correctly verify the act.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:20 pm