Khadr teen tortured, family says
By COLIN FREEZE
Toronto — A Canadian teenager who has spent his formative years in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been tortured by his U.S. captors, the teen's lawyers and relatives said Wednesday.
They urged Canadian officials to be more “outspoken” in securing the legal rights of Omar Khadr, who has been detained since he was captured in a deadly Afghanistan firefight with U.S. forces three years ago, when he was just 15 years old. The lawyers accused Canada of being complicit in the “torture” he is said to have suffered.
Mr. Khadr, an Afghanistan-raised Arab Canadian citizen whose brothers and late father have also been detained as suspected terrorists, was visited by his U.S. lawyers for four days this past fall. They said he had been mistreated by his captors and is traumatized by his ordeal. “He had just turned 18 at the time we were there,” said laywer Muneer Ahmed. “He a young 18. He's a child.”
Mr. Khadr has not been formally charged with any crime, but U.S. forces have declared him an enemy combatant and accused him of killing an American soldier with a grenade and also laying landmines meant to blow up U.S. vehicles. He has not been given any of the legal rights typically afforded to prisoners of war.
In a new affidavit, the lawyers allege that American soldiers traumatized Mr. Khadr by physically abusing him, threatening him with rape, and using him as a “human mop” to clean up his own urine. The allegations are the latest in a long series of complaints of human rights abuses to be levied by a detainees against the U.S. soldiers who run the detainment facility on the coast of Cuba.
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