Released CSIS video stars Omar Khadr, the Victim

Starring on the World Wide Web today is Omar Khadr, in video showing the then 16-year-old being interviewed by CSIS agents at Guantanamo Bay in February, 2003. Portrayed all along by the mainstream media as a “child soldier” and on Nov. 19, 2007 in a CBS newscast as an “obedient son”, in today’s video, Khadr is a weeping victim whose trust was betrayed by Canadians he thought had come to rescue him. “Promise you’ll protect me from the Americans,” Khadr told his Canadian visitors.

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“Teenaged prisoner Omar Khadr seemed sure that his countrymen from Canada had come to Cuba to help him and spoke freely when they asked questions,” reports the Globe and Mail. Globe reporters seem not just to know what the Guantanamo detainee was thinking by reading his face on today’s released video, but seem to know what the fabled virgins awaiting him in paradise actually look like. Waiting virgins, according to Globe reporters, are all “black-eyed”. “On the second day, the reality almost visibly dawned on his face. Agents had asked about his links to al-Qaeda, about his friends and family in Afghanistan, about whether he really thought dozens of black-eyed virgins awaited him in janna, or paradise.” (Colin Freeze and Omar el Akkad, Globe and Mail, July 15, 2008). “The teenager realized the obvious. The Canadian agents weren’t there to help. They were there to mine him for information. So he wept. He denied everything. He pulled at his hair and pulled down his orange prisoner’s suit. He showed his war wounds, which nearly killed him (emphasis Canada Free Press) during a battle with U.S. soldiers six months earlier.” “From behind the flaps of a ventilation shaft, a hidden camera caught all the rage and righteous indignation of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen raised by fundamentalist parents in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The 16-year-old al-Qaeda suspect and Guantanamo Bay detainee was facing allegations that he murdered a U.S. soldier. Lost in the mists of time is the name of that soldier, Sgt. 1st class Christopher Speer, who left behind a widow and family. Sgt. Layne Morris lost an eye in the same Afghanistan battle where Sgt. 1st class Speer was killed. In the brisk reportage following the release of the CSIS video, Canada Free Press (CFP) could not find a single reference to either soldier’s name. “The footage, compiled from three days of interviews taped six months after Khadr’s capture, is being released by his defence team, Edmonton lawyers, Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney, who fought a successful legal battle for the DVDs to be disclosed, now hope to shame Canadian politicians into lobbying Washington for the repatriation of the now 21-year-old, still jailed, but not convicted after six years.” Not only touted as a video that allows the public its first glimpse of an interview undertaken inside the U.S. military jail for terrorism, it is also the first footage ever shown of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in action during its 24-year history. The 5 a.m. release of the eight-minute “highlight reel” was timed to hit morning news. A full seven hours of footage is to come later this afternoon. CSIS agents’ faces and audio of some questions were edited out for security reasons. On the scene to ascertain the prisoner’s well being was Department of Foreign affairs official Jim Gould, who later wrote a briefing note stating that he had met “a screwed up young man” whose trust had been abused by just about everyone who had ever been responsible for him.” Nothing on the video shows Khadr having been tortured or mistreated. Khadr is scheduled to be tried before a U.S. military commission in early October on five war crime charges, and the tapes may be used as p art of his defence. Meanwhile, the Canadian Government and lawyers await a verdict: the one that determines the Canadian public’s response to it.