Not a nanogram
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: Not a nanogram
Date: Jul 16, 2010 11:25 AM
ARTICLE BELOW re the INTERNATIONAL
CRIMES-AGAINST-CHILDREN AT GUANTANAMO
==============================================
Nope. Americans do not care one bit
about the extreme suffering they cause
others. Not even for the suffering Americans
cause other Americans. Not even for the
suffering Americans cause American children:
http://www.actionlyme.org/andersonpenisbiter.htm
Not even as re the suffering of *THOUSANDS* of
American children by foster "carers," in
American pediatric jails, re the Injustice
System-at-Large, sick kids with Lyme who
are tortured and killed by UConn and the
CT DCF? ... over DCF-Rowlandgate ("TREA,"
the national pediatric jails enterprise)..?
http://www.actionlyme.org/RAGAGLIA_GRANDJURY_DETAILS.htm
Exactly how many Americans scream their bloody
eyeballs out *every* *day* (like this complaint)
*to* the USDOJ, the newspapers, faxing foreign
countries' embassies, the NIH...?
There is your proof. Americans do not care
about such extreme abuses, no matter who,
no matter what, no matter where.
KMDickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
http://www.relapsingfever.org
================================================
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/16-2
Published on Friday, July 16, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Defiance in Isolation: The Last Stand of Omar Khadr
by Andy Worthington
In the last week, Omar Khadr, the only Western citizen still held in
Guantánamo, has sacked his US lawyers and stated that he will boycott
his forthcoming trial by Military Commission, scheduled to begin on
August 10. He has also refused to have anything to do with a plea deal
that was being negotiated between the prosecution and defense lawyers,
which apparently involved him serving five years of a 30-year sentence
if he were to plead guilty to throwing a grenade that killed a US
Delta Force soldier, Sgt. Christopher Speer, on the day of his capture
after a firefight in Afghanistan nearly eight years ago, on July 27,
2002.
From a legal point of view, Khadr's decision to boycott his
forthcoming trial appears resolutely counter-productive. Of the three
prisoners convicted in the Commissions' miserable eight-year history
(a fourth, Ibrahim al-Qosi, awaits sentencing after a plea deal last
week), only one - Ali Hamza al-Bahlul - received a punitive sentence,
being sentenced to life in prison in November 2008, after a one-sided
trial in which he refused to mount a defense.
Khadr's rebellion may yet play to his advantage, but before
considering that, it is worth recounting how he reached this point,
and what his rebellion means.
At the time of his capture, Khadr was just 15 years old. Seriously
wounded after the firefight in which Sgt. Speer - and all of Khadr's
companions - were killed, he was then accused of having thrown the
grenade that killed Sgt. Speer, even though subsequent accounts have
indicated that he was face-down and unconscious under a pile of rubble
at the time, and was subjected to interrogations, threats and
insensitive and sometimes abusive treatment until his transfer to
Guantánamo, soon after his 16th birthday on September 19. 2002. In
Guantánamo, the same pattern of interrogations, threats and abusive
treatment continued.
Khadr's abuse as a juvenile, in defiance of international treaties
At no point was Khadr treated as a juvenile prisoner (those under 18
years of age when their alleged crimes take place), caught up in war
at the instigation of an adult - in this case, his father, Ahmed
Khadr, an alleged financier for Osama bin Laden, who had repeatedly
shuttled his family from Canada to Afghanistan and Pakistan during
Khadr's childhood. It was, after all, Ahmed Khadr who bore the
ultimate responsibility for letting his son spend time with a group of
men who, on July 27, 2002, took him with them when they went to visit
colleagues in Ab Khail, a small village outside Khost, where they were
subsequently ambushed by US soldiers.
Of particular relevance here is the Optional Protocol to the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children
in armed conflict, which was adopted by resolution of the General
Assembly of the United Nations on May 25, 2000, and entered into force
on February 12, 2002. The US ratified the Optional Protocol on
December 23, 2002, five months after Khadr was seized, but then
spectacularly failed to fulfill its obligations, which includes the
agreement that all States Parties who ratified the Protocol
"[r]ecogniz[e] the special needs of those children who are
particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities," and are
"[c]onvinced of the need [for] the physical and psychosocial
rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of
armed conflict."
The US also ignored a detailed plan for the care of juveniles in
Guantánamo, "Recommended Course of Action for Reception and Detention
of Individuals Under 18 Years of Age" (PDF), dated January 14, 2003,
which was drawn up by four doctors at Guantánamo, and provided
detailed guidance on how juveniles should be treated. The document,
which I discussed in an article in October 2008, began by noting, "All
efforts should be made to keep those in the pediatric age range [those
under 18] from undergoing detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba," and
pointed out, "People less than age 18 years are emotionally,
psychologically, and physically dynamic and complex. If it is
determined that they must be detained, then all aspects of their
transport, in-processing, and detainment should be specific for this
age group." Much of the rest of the document described, in detail, how
juvenile prisoners must be housed and treated, and how to meet their
psychological and educational needs.
[Omar Khadr in despair, from the video of his Canadian interrogation
at Guantanamo in February 2003] However, instead of being
rehabilitated, Khadr was subjected to the full weight of the
oppressive and illegal regime at Guantánamo, and was also abandoned by
the Canadian government, which sent interrogators to Guantánamo in
February 2003. As his Canadian lawyers, Nathan Whitling and Dennis
Edney, noted when they released a video of the interrogations in July
2008 (which was provided to them during Canadian court proceedings),
although Omar was clearly "suffering from severe emotional problems
connected with his detention and interrogation, crying heavily on more
than one occasion," the Canadian officials "dismissed his claims of
abuse on the flimsiest of pretexts," writing, in one of the reports,
that his allegations of torture at the US prison in Bagram,
Afghanistan "did not ring true," even though, as we now know, at least
two prisoners were killed by US soldiers just months after Khadr was
transferred to Guantánamo.
Khadr's only power - the power to dismiss his lawyers
As a result of all these factors, when two US lawyers, Muneer Ahmad
and Rick Wilson of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at
American University, finally got to meet him in October 2004,
following the Supreme Court's ruling, in June 2004, that the prisoners
had habeas corpus rights, "[s]ecuring [his] trust did not prove easy,"
as I explained in a profile of Khadr in November 2007, "primarily
because suspicion and paranoia were built into the fabric of
Guantánamo." Ahmad recalled that, when he finally met Omar, his first
thought was, "He's just a little kid." In August 2006, an article in
Rolling Stone explained, "Omar was gaunt and pale, in a state of
everlasting exhaustion, his senses starved by solitude. He had large
gunshot-wound scars on his back and chest, and smaller scars over most
of his body, several parts of which still held shrapnel."
Significantly, as Ahmad also explained, although Khadr gradually
opened up to them, "reveal[ing] himself to be very shy and curious
and, in most ways, still a child, with a child's sweetness and
credulous charm," he also realized, as Michelle Shephard explained in
the Toronto Star on Wednesday, that "the only control [he] could wield
in prison was whether he saw his lawyers, and if he would let them
represent him. Interrogations and daily routines were non-negotiable.
Even hunger strikes were unsuccessful due to Guantánamo's policy of
force-feeding striking detainees."
In November 2005, just over a year after his first visit from his
lawyers, Khadr was charged in the first incarnation of the Military
Commission trial system, which, in November 2001, Vice President Dick
Cheney and his close advisors thought would be a useful method for
trying terror suspects without due process, using material derived
from torture, and, if required, subjecting them swiftly to the death
penalty. It didn't work out that way, of course, In June 2006, the
Supreme Court ruled that the Commissions violated the Geneva
Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but they were
then revived by Congress, and in February 2007 Khadr was charged
again. This time around, proceedings limped on until January 2009,
when, on his first day in office, President Obama suspended the
Commissions, but by May he had concluded that they ought to be revived
with the aid of Congress, and in November last year Khadr was charged
for the third time.
As the Commissions have struggled to establish their legitimacy, and
have stumbled from one disaster to another, plagued by resignations,
internal problems and inconsistencies, and a fundamental misconception
that any of the charges faced by the prisoners are recognizable as war
crimes, Khadr has repeatedly resorted to the only power he has - the
power to dismiss his lawyers - even as those men and women did their
best to defend him, both in court hearings and in the media, pointing
out that he was a child when seized, that he was tortured, that he did
not throw the grenade that killed Sgt. Speer, and that the United
States ought to be ashamed for even contemplating putting a former
juvenile prisoner on trial for war crimes.
Khadr's defiance and his sense of justice
Khadr's actions may seem counter-intuitive, and in some ways may be
nothing more than a frustrated child in a man's body lashing out in a
manner that reveals the anguish beneath his generally calm exterior.
Looked at another way, however, it is easy to understand why Khadr has
just sacked his US lawyers (again), and why he believes that the
Commissions are rigged and that the US government is incapable of
delivering justice in his case. His reasoning permeates the statement
he read out in court on Monday, in which he declared:
[Y]our honor I'm boycotting this Military Commission because:
* Firstly the unfairness and unjustice of it. I say this because
not one of the lawyers I've had, or human rights organizations, or any
person, ever say that this commission is fair or looking for justice,
but on the contrary they say it's unfair and unjust and that it has
been constructed to convict detainees, not to find the truth (so how
can I ask for justice from a process that does not have it or offer
it) and to accomplish political and public goals. And what I mean is
when I was offered a plea bargain it was up to 30 years which I was
going to spend only five years so I asked why the 30 years. I was told
it makes the US government look good in the public's eyes and other
political causes.
* Secondly: The unfairness of the rules that will make a person so
depressed that he will admit to all[e]gations made upon him or take a
plea offer that will satisfy the US government and get him the least
sentence possible and l[e]gitimize this sham process. Therefore, I
will not willingly let the U.S. gov use me to [fulfill] its goal. I
have been used [too] many times when I was a child and that's [why]
I'm here taking blame and paying for things I didn't have a choice in
doing but was told to do by elders.
* Lastly I will not take any plea offer because it will give
excuse for the gov for torturing and abusing me when I was a child.
It's all there: Torture and abuse by the US when he was a child; the
refusal by the US authorities to recognize that he was manipulated by
those older than him; and a refusal to accept a plea deal that would
make the US look good, that would appear to validate an unjust
process, and that would involve him confessing to a crime he didn't
commit.
US discomfort, Canada's shameful history - and why the Harper
government needs to act now
I don't doubt that Khadr's defiance is mixed with confusion, but it
just may be that boycotting his pending trial will force both the
American and the Canadian governments to think long and hard about
what to do now.
For Barack Obama, the boycott threatens to turn a situation that is
already problematical into one that is beyond contemplation. When Ali
Hamza al-Bahlul refused to mount a defense and was convicted in the
dying days of the Bush administration, no one cared, but in Khadr's
case it is different. As Michelle Shephard explained on Wednesday, his
status as a child soldier "has already made many in Washington
uncomfortable," and a decision to boycott his trial may make it
"politically untenable." Jennifer Turner, a researcher who was
observing Khadr's hearing for the American Civil Liberties Union, told
Shephard by email, "Politically, it's a nightmare. Instead of
restoring the rule of law, Obama would be presiding over the one-sided
prosecution of a child, taken to a conflict zone by his family and
mistreated for years in US detention."
Even more pertinently, Khadr's boycott may finally provoke action from
the Canadian government, which, throughout this whole sordid story,
has behaved appallingly. Despite signing the Optional Protocol to the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of
children in armed conflict on July 7, 2000, and advocating on the
world stage for the rights of child soldiers from other countries, the
government has persistently refused to call for the return of Khadr to
Canada, and has, over the years, faced mounting condemnation in the
courts.
In April 2005, critics of the government's stance in Canada were
appalled when William Hooper, the assistant director of operation for
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, admitted that the
information obtained from Khadr's interrogation at Guantánamo had been
shared with the US authorities, without any attempt having been made
to ascertain whether it would be used in a case involving the death
penalty, and in July 2008, when Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney
released the video of Khadr's interrogations by Canadian agents, they
were able to do so because, on May 23, 2008, the Supreme Court of
Canada ruled unanimously that the government had acted illegally,
contravening Article 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which
guarantees that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security
of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in
accordance with the principles of fundamental justice," and ordered
the videotapes released.
A month later, on June 25, 2008, there was more trouble for the
government, when Mr. Justice Richard Mosley of the Federal Court of
Canada ruled (PDF) that a report from a visit to Khadr in March 2004
by Jim Gould of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, which
nonchalantly mentioned how Khadr had been subjected to prolonged sleep
deprivation for three weeks before his visit, "in an effort to make
him more amenable and willing to talk," constituted a breach of the UN
Convention against Torture and the Geneva Conventions.
In April 2009, the Federal Court of Canada revisited the case,
reiterating that Khadr's rights had been violated, and concluding that
the government had a "duty to protect" Khadr and should request his
return to Canada as soon as possible. In August 2009, the Federal
Court of Appeal upheld the ruling, and in January 2010, in another
unanimous 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada also upheld the
ruling, concluding:
The deprivation of [Khadr's] right to liberty and security of the
person is not in accordance with the principles of fundamental
justice. The interrogation of a youth detained without access to
counsel, to elicit statements about serious criminal charges while
knowing that the youth had been subjected to sleep deprivation and
while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared
with the prosecutors, offends the most basic Canadian standards about
the treatment of detained youth suspects.
The Supreme Court stopped short of ordering the government to seek
Khadr's return, accepting, lamely, that it was up to senior officials
to ascertain how to balance foreign policy requirements with the need
to respect Khadr's constitutional rights. Predictably, given its past
behavior, the government decided that Khadr's rights counted for
nothing, prompting another round of litigation. Last week, Mr. Justice
Russell Zinn gave the government seven days to come up with a list of
ways in which they intended to protect Khadr's rights, but on Monday,
as Khadr prepared to deliver his statement in Guantánamo, the
government filed another last-minute appeal.
Whether evasion on the part of the government is endlessly possible
remains to be seen, but it now seems likely that, with Khadr's boycott
looming, the Obama administration may finally seek to exert pressure
on Prime Minister Stephen Harper. As Michelle Shephard explained on
Wednesday, such has been the Canadian government's aversion to dealing
constructively with Khadr's case that government officials were not
even involved in the discussions regarding a plea deal, meaning that
the whole arrangement of serving five years of a 30-year sentence "was
never guaranteed."
Khadr may not have known this when he sprang his surprise on his
latest lawyers, but, as Dennis Edney explained, "The deal was
dependent on a number of things, including whether Canada would take
him. And Canada was never at the table."
With a chronic travesty of justice looming, it is time for Canada to
sit at the table with the Americans, and to work out how to secure
Khadr's release without the embarrassment of a war crimes trial.
Unlike every other Western citizen, Omar Khadr has been spurned for
too long by his home country, and it is time for Stephen Harper to
secure his return, and to bring to an end the desperate defiance, born
of frustration and isolation, of a former child prisoner who has lost
a third of his life in an experimental prison outside the law.
Andy Worthington is a journalist and historian, based in London. He is
the author of The Guantánamo Files, the first book to tell the stories
of all the detainees in America's illegal prison. For more
information, visit his blog here.
KMDickson