Detained like me: The Guantanamo Ordeal of Omar Khadr
Jurist Hotline
by Moazzam Begg
March 17, 2008
In January this year, a training document produced by the Canadian
foreign ministry, which referred to Guantanamo Bay, listed the United
States as a country known to practice torture. Despite this assertion,
the only Westerner remaining in the world's most infamous prison at
Guantanamo Bay is the Canadian, Omar Khadr.
Omar is one of the youngest people to have been captured and
detained by US authorities since the invasion of Afghanistan. He had
only just turned fifteen when he was first brought into the Bagram
Airbase detention facility, horribly wounded. That is where I first met
him.
Chunks of his chest and shoulder had been blown out - or so I'd
assumed; he was also unable to see through one of his eyes because of
the injuries sustained in an attack by US troops. His chest looked like
he'd just had a post mortem operation performed on him - alive. He was
emaciated, fragile and silent. But the rumour spread around about him
claimed that he'd launched a grenade-attack on unsuspecting soldiers.
Consequently, the military police units guarding us all treated Omar
with open contempt and hostility. He was sometimes screamed at all
night long; made to stack up crates of water bottles which were thrown
down again; a hood placed over his head whilst his wrists were shackled
to the ceiling. The soldiers used to call him 'Buckshot Bob' but I
never really understood why as his wounds didn't seem like those from a
shotgun. Only now, three years after my release have I understood the
logic behind this name - after having seen newly released photos of
Omar when he was captured: the missing chunks of flesh were exit
wounds. It is now clear that Omar had been shot in the back.
Many weeks passed during which I managed to have some whispered
conversations with Omar but, just like me, he knew his ordeal had only
begun. (I witnessed two separate killings in Bagram by American
soldiers before I too was sent to Guantanamo. These killings are the
subject of this year's Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark
Side).
Omar was later accused of causing the death of a US Special Forces
operative with a grenade. Yet a report given by the soldier who shot
him says that not only was Mr. Khadr alive there, an adult man was also
alive at the time he, the U.S. soldier, rushed in shooting. This
contradicts the testimony of another solider who said that only Mr.
Khadr was alive at the time.
Whatever the case may be, Omar will soon be approaching the seventh
year of his detention in Guantanamo. And his government, which accepts
that abuses faced by others at such places are very real, will do
nothing for its own citizen, who was bought there in chains as a child.
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CSHRA Note
(Caution) A graphic picture of Omar Khadr's severe wounds was released by the Toronto Star. It can be seen here.