Detainee alleges interrogators repeatedly threatened him with rape
Mar. 19, 2008
Carol Rosenberg - McClatchy NewspapersIssue date: 3/13/08 Section: MCT News
WASHINGTON _ In a fresh document from the Guantanamo war court files, Canadian captive Omar Khadr alleges that he was repeatedly threatened with rape as an interrogation technique in Afghanistan and at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba.
The partially censored nine-page affidavit, signed by Khadr on Feb. 22, covers old ground already investigated, including allegations of abuse at Guantanamo that emerged in 2005, prompting a Navy criminal investigation.
But the document includes never-before revealed allegations, such as the rape threats and a partially censored description of regaining consciousness after his capture to discover he was being interrogated in an American field hospital in Afghanistan. He was 15.
Once released from medical care to the Bagram detention center, he said, "I was interrogated many, many times. For about the first two weeks to a month that I was there I would be brought into the interrogation room on a stretcher."
Military spokesmen have said for years that Guantanamo captives are treated humanely and that scattered instances of mistreatment across the years have been investigated and dealt with in keeping with military standards.
The details are emerging in the military trial case of Khadr, now 21, accused of the grenade killing of a U.S. Army commando in a July 2002 firefight. The document was admitted to court last week as part of the pretrial arguments over access to potential witnesses for Khadr's upcoming summertime trial before U.S. military officers, called a military commission.
Meantime, the Canadian's Pentagon lawyers have been searching for interrogators and other witnesses to his capture, in which he was shot twice in the back in a U.S. raid on a suspected al-Qaida compound. They also want witnesses to the interrogations in Afghanistan and later in Guantanamo.
The lawyers are seeking to punch holes in the prosecution case alleging that Khadr, as an al-Qaida conspirator since age 10, was the only enemy combatant who could have thrown the grenade that fatally wounded Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., in a firefight near Khost, Afghanistan.
The partially censored nine-page affidavit, signed by Khadr on Feb. 22, covers old ground already investigated, including allegations of abuse at Guantanamo that emerged in 2005, prompting a Navy criminal investigation.
But the document includes never-before revealed allegations, such as the rape threats and a partially censored description of regaining consciousness after his capture to discover he was being interrogated in an American field hospital in Afghanistan. He was 15.
Once released from medical care to the Bagram detention center, he said, "I was interrogated many, many times. For about the first two weeks to a month that I was there I would be brought into the interrogation room on a stretcher."
Military spokesmen have said for years that Guantanamo captives are treated humanely and that scattered instances of mistreatment across the years have been investigated and dealt with in keeping with military standards.
The details are emerging in the military trial case of Khadr, now 21, accused of the grenade killing of a U.S. Army commando in a July 2002 firefight. The document was admitted to court last week as part of the pretrial arguments over access to potential witnesses for Khadr's upcoming summertime trial before U.S. military officers, called a military commission.
Meantime, the Canadian's Pentagon lawyers have been searching for interrogators and other witnesses to his capture, in which he was shot twice in the back in a U.S. raid on a suspected al-Qaida compound. They also want witnesses to the interrogations in Afghanistan and later in Guantanamo.
The lawyers are seeking to punch holes in the prosecution case alleging that Khadr, as an al-Qaida conspirator since age 10, was the only enemy combatant who could have thrown the grenade that fatally wounded Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., in a firefight near Khost, Afghanistan.
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