Canada Won't Seek Return Of Gitmo Detainee
The government said Wednesday that it will not seek the repatriation of a young detainee in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite newly released video footage showing the then-teenage prisoner repeatedly sobbing for his mother and pleading for Canada's help.
A spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the video of Toronto-born terror suspect Omar Khadr being interrogated by Canadian officials in 2003 will not sway his government's position that Khadr must remain at the U.S. prison to face trial.
"These videos were in possession of the previous government when they decided to pursue the judicial process for Mr. Khadr to have his day in court in Guantanamo," Harper's chief spokesman Kory Teneycke told The Associated Press.
"The information is not new. We can't ignore the serious charges Mr. Khadr is facing. The proper forum for determining his guilt or innocence is a judicial process not a political process. We're not affected by what's on the cover of newspapers."
Khadr's lawyers released the video footage Tuesday to help persuade Harper to seek the young detainee's return before he is prosecuted for war crimes before a U.S. special military tribunal in Guantanamo later this year.
American officials say Khadr may look like a little boy lost but he is really a hardened terrorist, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. He allegedly served as a translator for a top al Qaeda operative being hunted by American commandos who leveled the compound where Khadr was hiding.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer of the special forces was killed when someone threw a grenade from the rubble. Khadr was the only one still alive in there, although no one actually saw him throw the grenade, reports Martin.
The son of an alleged al Qaeda financier, Khadr was 15 when he was captured and could face life in prison if convicted.
He is Guantanamo Bay's lone remaining detainee from a Western country and also its youngest prisoner.
The seven hours of grainy footage, recorded over four days of questioning by Canadian intelligence agents in 2003, shows a then 16-year-old Khadr breaking down in tears. At one point he pleads for medical help for chest and back wounds he says have not healed six months after his capture.
He tells his interrogators about torture and abuse he faced at the hands of U.S. officials.
Lying on a couch, munching away at chips, he defends his late father, Egyptian-born Ahmed Said Khadr, who fought for al Qaeda and had stayed with Osama bin Laden a man some hold responsible now for Khadr's fate for having indoctrinated him into the world of terrorism.
Khadr also denies Speer during the 2002 battle in Afghanistan.
The unprecedented release of the footage, the first ever to be seen publicly of interrogations inside the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, generated news headlines worldwide.60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon reported in November 2007 that Khadr was the only person in modern history to have been charged for war crimes he allegedly committed as a minor.
The video prompted Canadian opposition politicians and human rights groups to demand that Harper seek Khadr's return to Canada, but the conservative government stuck to its position.
"We're not changing our position, especially not at the 11th hour. His fate rests with a judicial process and we must maintain the process that has already begun," said Teneycke.
Khadr's American military lawyer said Wednesday that the military tribunals at Guantanamo "aren't designed to be fair."
"They're designed to produce convictions" Kuebler said from his office in Washington, D.C.
Kuebler said anyone who watched Khadr whimpering for his mother and still believed he had vowed to die fighting with a bunch of hardened al Qaeda terrorists is "crazy."
"The tape shows Omar Khadr not as a hardened terrorist but as a frightened boy," he said.
"It just shows how unreliable anything that they extracted from this kid is and would be at trial."
Last week, U.S. intelligence information made public under Canadian court order showed Khadr was deprived of sleep and subjected to other abuse, before Canadian officials interviewed Khadr in a different 2004 interrogation.
But not everyone agrees with the public support generated by the video.
Sgt. Layne Morris, who was blinded in the July 2002 firefight that left Speer dead, was adamant that Khadr was an incorrigible terrorist and deserved no sympathy.
"He's disappointed and discouraged that he's alive and he's in the hands of coalition forces instead of in paradise with 72 virgins," Morris said Wednesday from Portland, Oregon.
Morris, who is expected to be a key prosecution witness, insisted Khadr be tried in the U.S. because he "committed adult crimes" against Americans.
"He waited until the troops got close enough that he could throw a hand grenade," said Morris.
Kuebler disputed Morris' version, noting that the sergeant had been taken from the battle scene before Speer died.
In the end, it does not matter if Khadr did throw the grenade, Kuebler insisted.
"He's a child soldier and he deserves protections as a child soldier under international law."