THE GUARDIAN: Former British resident Binyam Mohamed arrives back in Britain tomorrow after his release from Guantanamo Bay. British and US lawyers claim that sustained beatings — which have only recently stopped — have left him with severe psychological and physical problems. Binyam Mohamed will return to Britain suffering from a huge range of injuries after being beaten by US guards right up to the point of his departure from Guantánamo Bay, according to the first detailed accounts of his treatment inside the camp.
During medical examinations last week, doctors discovered injuries and ailments resulting from apparently brutal treatment in detention. Mohamed was found to be suffering from bruising, organ damage, stomach complaints, malnutrition, sores to feet and hands, severe damage to ligaments as well as profound emotional and psychological problems which have been exacerbated by the refusal of Guantánamo’s guards to give him counselling.
Mohamed’s British lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said his client had been beaten “dozens” of times inside the notorious US camp in Cuba with the most recent abuse occurring during recent weeks. He said: “He has a list of physical ailments that cover two sheets of A4 paper. What Binyam has been through should have been left behind in the middle ages.” Lieutenant colonel Yvonne Bradley, Mohamed’s US military attorney, added: “He has been severely beaten. Sometimes I don’t like to think about it because my country is behind all this.” MORE
ELLIOTT SMITH: Pitselah
[Dir. by JAMES DOOLITTLE]
CNN: Khadr claims in a 2008 affidavit that his interrogators spat on him, pulled his hair and threatened him with
rape during the early weeks at Bagram. He describes a “soldier” at Guantanamo forcing him to wear a mask that made it hard to breathe and made him pass out. He said he endured this treatment “3 or 4 times.” Khadr also said he was forced to scrub the floor on his hands and knees while still wounded and describes being “terrified” at Bagram when a bag was placed over his head and barking dogs were brought into his interrogation room. Riddled with shrapnel cuts, Khadr said his interrogators nicknamed him “Buck-shot.”
“I did not want to expose myself to any more harm, so I always just told interrogators what I thought they wanted to hear,” the affidavit reads. Read Khadr’s allegations of torture Only one piece of visual evidence showing Khadr’s treatment has been made public — an interrogation recorded in February 2003, about seven months after his capture. Khadr’s attorneys obtained the footage, recorded with a hidden camera at Guantanamo, in a lawsuit against the Canadian government. A judge allowed the government to edit the tape before releasing it, defense attorneys said.
“Nobody cares about me,” Khadr says while he cries and lifts his shirt, attempting to show his injuries. “People care about you,” says a male speaker, who the Pentagon and defense attorneys identify as a Canadian. The man continues to talk to Khadr in the tone of a disappointed parent, telling the teen to “relax.” Khadr breaks down and sobs uncontrollably. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: Omar Ahmed Khadr (??? ???? ???, born September 19, 1986) is the fourth child in the Canadian Khadr family. He was captured by American forces at the age of 15 following a four-hour firefight with militants in the village of Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan.[1] He has spent six years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps charged with war crimes and providing support to terrorism after allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier.[2] A Canadian citizen born in Toronto,[3][4] he is the youngest prisoner held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by the United States and has been frequently referred to as a child soldier.[5][6] The only Western citizen remaining in Guantanamo, Khadr is unique in that Canada has refused to seek extradition or repatriation despite the urgings of Amnesty International, UNICEF, the Canadian Bar Association and other prominent organisations.[7][8][9][10] Khadr is the only Guantanamo detainee who has faced a judge and who is not boycotting the military tribunals.[11] In February 2008, the Pentagon accidentally released documents that revealed that although Khadr was present during the firefight, there was no other evidence that he had thrown the grenade. In fact, military officials had originally reported that another of the surviving militants had thrown the grenade just before being killed.[12] MORE
CTV: A military judge has dismissed charges against Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan, saying the case is outside his jurisdiction….Khadr had been classified as an “enemy combatant” by a military panel years earlier. But because he was not classified as an “alien unlawful enemy combatant,” Army Col. Peter Brownback said he had no choice but to throw the case out. “The charges are dismissed without prejudice,” Brownback said as he adjourned the proceeding. Under the Military Commissions Act, which U.S. President George Bush signed last year after the Supreme Court threw out the previous war-crimes trial system, only those classified as “unlawful” enemy combatants can face war trials there. “Obviously there are illegal enemy combatants and then there are legal enemy combatants,” Clark said. “In other words if you’re wearing the uniform of another country, just because you fired a shot in anger at an American soldier doesn’t mean that it is illegal,” Clark said. MORE
JURIST: On May 28 2008 Brownback was summarily removed from the Khadr case by the Pentagon. MORE