Extracts from the article: "The Tale of Two Tortured Teenagers (in Bagram and Guantánamo)" - by Andy Worthington
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/01/21/the-tale-of-two-tortured-teenagers-in-bagram-and-guantanamo/
..." Similar problems afflict the case of Omar Khadr, who was tortured from the moment he was taken into custody at Bagram, despite being severely wounded after the firefight that led to his capture. Amongst other cruelties, Khadr was refused any medication for his wounds, was hung from his wrists for long periods of time, and, as an article in Rolling Stone explained, was “ordered to clean floors on his hands and knees while his wounds were still wet.”
In Guantánamo his torture continued, when he was subjected to the reverse engineered SERE techniques. He told his lawyers that he was “short-shackled by his hands and feet to a bolt in the floor and left for five to six hours,” and that “occasionally a US officer would enter the room to laugh at him.” He also said that he was “kept in extremely cold rooms,” “lifted up by the neck while shackled, and then dropped to the floor,” and “beaten by guards.” In one particularly notorious incident, the guards left him short-shackled until he urinated on himself, and then “poured a pine-scented cleaning fluid over him and used him as a ‘human mop’ to clean up the mess.”
All this abuse took place even though, like Mohamed Jawad, Khadr was almost certainly not responsible for the main crime for which he was charged: killing a US soldier with a hand grenade. In Khadr’s case, it was not until November 2007 that it became apparent that the prosecution had suppressed or even altered evidence that conflicted with the story that the Commissions were trying to sell: that Khadr was not a teenager but a terrorist."...
And for those who believe in "coercive interrogations", the testimony of Damien Corsetti, a former US interrogator at Bagram follows:
"On Monday, as Corsetti arrived at Guantánamo to testify about what happened to Khadr at Bagram, where he was one of the few guards to befriend him, he explained to Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, “I firmly believe it was torture and unfortunately I took part in it … I was a believer at one time, I was. I guess this is just me trying to make it a little bit right. You know? Maybe get some closure to it. We’ll see.”
(for the full text click on title)
