Diplomat Raps Canadian's Care At Guantanamo

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
MiamiHerald.com
September 12, 2008

A legal officer with Canada's foreign affairs department complained a few months ago that her efforts to ensure proper medical care and prison conditions for a young Canadian detainee at Guantánamo Bay were being stymied by his American captors, newly released documents reveal.
Lawyers for Toronto-born terror suspect Omar Khadr filed the documents this week as part of their lawsuit against the Canadian government aimed at forcing Prime Minister Stephen Harper to demand Khadr's repatriation from the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.
Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2002, is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier and faces up to life in prison if convicted of war crimes.
Khadr's lawyers have been pressuring Harper to seek his return before he faces a war crimes trial at Guantánamo. The trial was supposed to begin Oct. 8, but a judge on Thursday delayed its start. A new date has not been set.
The classified documents of welfare visits by a legal officer from Canada's Foreign Affairs Department show even simple requests to provide Khadr with a pillow, blanket or sunglasses to protect his shrapnel-damaged eyes and body foundering on apparent security concerns.
''Both of these sunglasses have been rejected on the grounds that they might constitute a security risk,'' Suneeta Millington wrote after visiting Khadr this spring.
''A number of requests made both by Omar and Canadian government officials either fall through the cracks, go ignored or are not processed in a timely manner,'' adds Millington, who was at Guantánamo observing the war court on Thursday.
The officials also indicates that jailers cut open Khadr's new shoes even though the Canadian officials specifically bought them to meet security requirements.
Khadr was horribly wounded during the fateful 2002 battle and the aftereffects continue to plague him.
''Shrapnel is slowly working its way out of Omar's body,'' Millington reported after visiting him in June.
The documents reveal that the American officials ignored Canadian entreaties as far back as 2003 to house Khadr in a juvenile detention facility.
Nathan Whitling, one of Khadr's Canadian lawyers, said Thursday the documents are more evidence the Harper government has ''repeatedly lied'' to the Canadian public.
Neither Harper's office nor officials at the U.S. Embassy could be immediately reached for comment Thursday.
Harper has maintained that his Conservative government, which took office in 2006, sought assurances that Khadr was being treated humanely.
''As the Federal Court has held, Omar is not being treated humanely,'' Whitling said from Edmonton. ``He was tortured by the Americans when he was still a child and the Harper government did all it could to conceal this fact in an attempt to avoid embarrassing the Bush administration.''
In May, a Canadian Federal Court judge found that Khadr's treatment by U.S. authorities in Guantánamo -- who deprived him of sleep to soften him up in advance of a 2004 visit by Canadian interrogators -- violated international laws against torture.
Following that judgment, the court ordered the release of more than seven hours of video documenting interrogation sessions involving the Canadian officials and Khadr from five years ago -- interrogations that the U.S. Supreme Court also later ruled took place in an illegal detention environment.
The video, which shows the then 16-year-old pleading for Canada's help and his mother, garnered international headlines as the first ever glimpse at a Guantánamo interrogation.
Although Khadr is the only western captive still held at Guantánamo Bay, Harper has steadfastly refused to get involved, arguing the military commission process under way must first run its course.
Khadr, now 21, has been detained for six years. He has been described by officials as ''nonradicalized'' and a ``good kid.''
 
Cry me a freakin river. Nonradicalized but he was hangin out with the Taliban at 15. What the fark ever.
 
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