Khadr Sentenced To 40 Years By Military Tribunal

[Sharpshooter]

Nope.

I do like the stay in bed idea though. Unfortunately it's not feasible.

[ronthecivil]

You guys are so blinded by your own perspective it's shocking.

[inane]

Where, in that post, did I use the word 'terrorist'?

[Sharpshooter]

Uniformed<knuckledragger<bat crap crazy with my head up my ass

It's all relative.

Reminds me of watching the attack adds from the US election last night. More insult than substance.

[JAH]

I'm talking this thread.

'Enemy Combatent' Yes, that sounds pleasing doesn't it.

[ronthecivil]

Sound response, quite persuasive if I may say so....but i'm sure the answer will be...nope, once again...and yup in agreeance.

[Sharpshooter]

Oh come on! He was subjected to sleep dep, he wasn't waterboarded! Let's give the torture business a rest. Krikey, a new Dad is also subjected to sleep dep, is little Johnny torturing him?

[GLASSJAW]

I watched that CBC special on the kid. Man, the American reports on the murder/death aren't even consistent. I bet Khadr didn't even kill the dude.

[JAH]

• For three weeks prior to the Canadian visit, Khadr was deprived of sleep and moved to a new cell every three hours for 21 days in order to "make him more amenable and willing to talk.
• All those persons who have been in positions of authority over him have abused him and his trust, for their own purposes. In protest of the fact that DFAIT and CSIS had been allowed to interrogate Khadr, but not the RCMP, Supt. Mike Cabana resigned his post in Project O Canada.
• For most of 2003, Khadr had a cell next to British detainee Ruhal Ahmed and the two often discussed their favourite Hollywood films, including Braveheart, Die Hard and Harry Potter. Ahmed later recalled that while some interrogations would see Khadr return to his cell smiling and discussing what movies he had been shown, other times he would return crying and huddle in the corner with his blanket over his head.
• In the early spring of 2003, Khadr was told "Your life is in my hands" by a military interrogator, who spat on him, tore out some of his hair and threatened to send him to a country that would torture him more thoroughly, making specific reference to an Egyptian Askri raqm tisa ("Soldier Number Nine") who enjoyed raping prisoners. The interrogation ended with Khadr being told he would spend the rest of his life in Guantanamo. A few weeks later, an interrogator giving his name as Izmarai spoke to Khadr in Pashto, threatening to send him to a "new prison" at Bagram Airbase where "they like small boys"
• Khadr has been reported to have been kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time; to have been denied adequate medical treatment; to have been subjected to short shackling, and left bound, in uncomfortable stress positions until he soiled himself.
• Khadr's lawyers allege that his interrogators "dragged [him] back and forth in a mixture of his urine and pine oil" and did not provide a change of clothes for two days in March.
• At the end of March 2003, Omar was upgraded to "Level Four" security, and transferred to solitary confinement in a windowless and empty cell for the month of April
• Khadr was interrogated by Canadians six times between 2003–2004, and ordered to identify photos of Canadians believed to have ties to terrorism, including Maher Arar, who had been flown by Americans to Syria and tortured for a year before being found innocent. When he told Canadians that he had been tortured into giving false confessions by the Americans, the Canadian authorities called him a liar, causing him to cry. He later recalled that he had "tried to cooperate so that they would take me back to Canada".
• Khadr participated in a hunger strike, lasting 15 days before he was force fed by prison guards. He reported collapsing as he left the hospital, and that prison guards assaulted him violently.
• On July 20, 2005, Guantánamo detainee Omar Deghayes wrote "Omar Khadr is very sick in our block. He is throwing [up] blood. They gave him cyrum [serum] when they found him on the floor in his cell", and his extract was subsequently published in The Independent.
• In April 2005, Khadr was again given another written psychiatric test by lawyers Ahmad and Wilson, which was turned over to Dr. Daryl Matthews, a forensic psychologist who had previously been invited to Guantanamo two years earlier by The Pentagon. Matthews concluded that Khadr met the "full criteria for a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
• Khadr also participated in the July 2005 200-detainee hunger strike, and went fifteen days without eating. He was twice taken to the on-site hospital and force-fed – on July 9 he was kicked and assaulted repeatedly by Military Police after collapsing from weakness.
• In 2006, the Army began an investigation into alleged abuse against Khadr while he had been held in Bagram
• Khadr was permitted to speak with his mother by phone for the first time in March 2007, nearly five years after his capture. He was allowed one other phone call to his family, but has had no contact since June 2007 when he was put into the harshest section of Guantanamo, Camp VI, for "disciplinary reasons" which Canada argued was unfair as Khadr's behaviour largely depended on which camp he was held within, and the United States transferred him back to Camp IV.
• Kuebler was able to arrange for a psychological evaluation from Kate Porterfield, who was able to visit Khadr three times in November 2008. Porterfield reported that she was finding it hard to establish trust with Khadr, which was cited as "to be expected in cased like Khadr's where young people had been abused"

Just a little sleep deprivation eh? New father's go through as much you say? Poor little johnny, there's nothing wrong with a little sleepiness.

[Wetcoaster]

Oh come on! He was subjected to sleep dep, he wasn't waterboarded! Let's give the torture business a rest. Krikey, a new Dad is also subjected to sleep dep, is little Johnny torturing him?

[Sharpshooter]

Yeah sleep dep.

I noted that anything more than this (other than stress positions, also not torture) are allegations his lawyer levelled but have not been proven.

[JAH]

Khadr and his military defence lawyers say differently:

[Wetcoaster]

Of course they do. I would expect nothing less. Doesn't make it fact or even likely.

[JAH]

Really????

Here is another problem the prosecution faced - two differing stories:

The disclosure came on a day Mr. Khadr’s defence lawyers also highlighted a critical change made to a senior commander’s report of the firefight in which the Canadian is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in a grenade attack.

Speaking afterward with reporters, Mr. Khadr’s military lawyer, navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, charged the change helped what he called the U.S. government’s “manufactured” theory about what happened the day of Mr. Khadr’s capture.

The author of the combat report, identified as Lt.-Col. “W,” initially wrote July 28, 2002, that another U.S. operative subsequently killed the fighter who “engaged” the deceased U.S. soldier, Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler told the commission.

About two months later, a new report -- bearing the same July date -- emerged saying the fighter had not been killed.

This is significant, because a separate confidential combat report inadvertently released to journalists last month revealed for the first time that a second fighter had been present alongside Khadr at the time the grenade was thrown. That fighter, who was killed, could be the person Col. “W” refers to in his first draft.

Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler noted that Ottawa’s inquiries to the U.S. government about why it was holding Toronto-born Khadr -- then just 15 -- could have provoked the change as the U.S sought to justify the detention. If so, the U.S. government will have effectively lied to the Canadian government.

“Omar is captured and detained, there is pressure from the Canadian government to know about the circumstances of his capture . . . there is a story generated to respond to those allegations,” said Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler. “It turns out we now know that that story was false.”

Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler said when the prosecution provided the defence with both versions of the report, he was told Col. W “updated the document to make it more accurate.”

“The point is an official U.S. government document was retroactively altered to be consistent with the proposition that Omar had thrown this hand grenade,” Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler said.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=373277#ixzz13VosHjVD

[Sharpshooter]

Of course they do. I would expect nothing less. Doesn't make it fact or even likely.

[ronthecivil]

Really????

Here is another problem the prosecution faced - two differing stories:

The disclosure came on a day Mr. Khadr's defence lawyers also highlighted a critical change made to a senior commander's report of the firefight in which the Canadian is accused of killing a U.S. soldier in a grenade attack.

Speaking afterward with reporters, Mr. Khadr's military lawyer, navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, charged the change helped what he called the U.S. government's "manufactured" theory about what happened the day of Mr. Khadr's capture.

The author of the combat report, identified as Lt.-Col. "W," initially wrote July 28, 2002, that another U.S. operative subsequently killed the fighter who "engaged" the deceased U.S. soldier, Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler told the commission.

About two months later, a new report -- bearing the same July date -- emerged saying the fighter had not been killed.

This is significant, because a separate confidential combat report inadvertently released to journalists last month revealed for the first time that a second fighter had been present alongside Khadr at the time the grenade was thrown. That fighter, who was killed, could be the person Col. "W" refers to in his first draft.

Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler noted that Ottawa's inquiries to the U.S. government about why it was holding Toronto-born Khadr -- then just 15 -- could have provoked the change as the U.S sought to justify the detention. If so, the U.S. government will have effectively lied to the Canadian government.

"Omar is captured and detained, there is pressure from the Canadian government to know about the circumstances of his capture . . . there is a story generated to respond to those allegations," said Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler. "It turns out we now know that that story was false."

Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler said when the prosecution provided the defence with both versions of the report, he was told Col. W "updated the document to make it more accurate."

"The point is an official U.S. government document was retroactively altered to be consistent with the proposition that Omar had thrown this hand grenade," Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler said.

http://www.nationalp...7#ixzz13VosHjVD

[ronthecivil]

Oh, and he probably was tortured to some degree. Take it up with the US government. They are the ones that did it.

[Sharpshooter]

Oh, and he probably was tortured to some degree. Take it up with the US government. They are the ones that did it.

[Sharpshooter]

Department of Justice Approved Detainee Torture in 2002

Torture Memo Justified Suspending Geneva Conventions for Al Qaeda and Taliban

From Amy Zalman, Ph.D

On January 22, 2002, The U.S. Department of Justice issued a document to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, and Department of Defense Counsel William J. Hynes on the "Application of Treaties and Laws to Al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees." The document concluded that existing rules on detainees do not necessarily apply to Al Qaeda or Taliban members:

You have asked for our Office's views concerning the effect of international treaties and federal laws on the treatment of individuals detained by the U.S. Armed Forces during the conflict in Afghanistan. In particular, you have asked whether certain treaies forming part of the laws of armed conflict apply to the conditions of detention and the procedures for trial of members of al Qaeda and the Taliban militia. We conclude that these treaties do not protect members of the al Qaeda organization, which as a non-State actor cannot be a party to the international agreements governing war. We durther conclude that the President has sufficient grounds to find that these treaties do not protect members of the Taliban militia. This memorandum expresses no view as to whether the President should decided, as a matter of policy, that the U.S. Armed Forces should adhere to the standards of conduct in those treaties with respect to the treatment of prisoners.

Al Qaeda and Taliban are not Prisoners-of-War Argument

The primary argument put forth in the Memo was that the Taliban and al Qaeda are not "prisoners-of-war" and therefore Geneva Conventions on the treatment of POWs don't apply to them. The Memo analyzed the U.S. War Crimes Act (WCA), which incorporates elements Geneva Convention prohibitions on torture of prisoners of war.

In particular, the Memo discusses Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which governs armed conflicts between parties who may not have signed the Conventions. This clause prohibits the torture of those captured in such conflicts. The Memo argues that Article 3 was intended to cover situations of Civil War, but that there is no part of the Geneva Conventions that addresses hostilities between non-State actors and States.

Presidential Discretion to Suspend Geneva Conventions

The 2002 Memo explicitly says that it doesn't recommend any particular Presidential action. This is a little disingenuous. There are a number of place in the 37 page document where justifications for their suspension are supplied. The authors of the document do not discuss why it might be inadvisable on legal grounds to suspend U.S. adherence to Geneva Convention III and U.S. law.

The basic legal scaffolding on which the Memo's authors build their argument is that: (1) War is an event that takes place between two sovereign states; (2) Prisoners of War, therefore, are fighters captured in war who are citizens of the enemy state; (3) Because Al Qaeda is not a state, its captured members don't warrant POW status. The Taliban, who were the legal government of Afghanistan before its 2002 fall, require some more complex reasoning that suggests that Afghanistan was a dysfunctional or failed state:

In the case of the Taliban, the Memo provides that:

The President has the constitutional authority to temporarily suspend our treaty obligations to Afghanistan under the Geneva Conventions . . .In particular, he may determine that Afghanistan was not a functioning State, and therefore that the Taliban militia was not a government, during the period in which the Taliban was engaged in hostilities against the United States and its allies. Afghanistan's status as a failed State is sufficient groiund alone for the President to suspend Geneva III, and thus to deprive members of the Taliban militia of POW status. The Presdient's constitutional power to suspend performance of our treaty obligations with respect to Afghanistan is not restricted by international law.

In the case of Al Qaeda, the Memo's authors argue that:

…Geneva III dos not apply to the al Qaeda terrorist organization. Therefore, neither the detention nor trial of al Qaeda fighters is subject to Geneva III (or the WCA). Three reasons … support this conclusion. First, al Qaeda is not a State and thus cannot receive the beneifits of a State party to the Conventions. Second, al Qaeda members fialr to satisfy the eligiblitiy requirement for treatment as POWS under Geneva Convention III. Third, the nature of the conflict precludes application of common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

[JAH]

And torture is torture...the degrees are irrelevant.