Torturing a Teenager, Guantánamo's Forgotten Child

[G_j]

http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington01162009.html

Weekend Edition
January 16-18, 2009

Torturing a Teenager

Guantánamo's Forgotten Child

By ANDY WORTHINGTON
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While this remains a deeply disturbing problem that Barack Obama will have to remedy of he is to have any chance of fulfilling his stated ambition to “regain America’s moral stature in the world,” Judge Leon struck another blow for justice yesterday by ruling that the government had failed to establish a case against another prisoner, Mohammed El-Gharani, and ordering his release “forthwith.”

Torturing a teenager

A Chadian national and Saudi resident, El-Gharani was just 14 years old when he was seized by Pakistani forces in October 2001, in a raid on a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, 700 miles from the battlefields of Afghanistan. As with all but three of the 22 confirmed juveniles who have been held at Guantánamo, the U.S. authorities never treated him separately from the adult population, even though they are obliged, under the terms of the UN’s Optional Protocol on the Rights of the Child (on the involvement of children in armed conflict) to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”

Instead, El-Gharani was treated with appalling brutality. After being tortured in Pakistani custody, he was sold to U.S. forces, who flew him to a prison at Kandahar airport, where, he said, one particular soldier “would hold my penis, with scissors, and say he’d cut it off.” His treatment did not improve in Guantánamo. Subjected relentlessly to racist abuse, because of the color of his skin, he was hung from his wrists on numerous occasions, and was also subjected to a regime of “enhanced” techniques to prepare him for interrogation -- including prolonged sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation and the use of painful stress positions -- that clearly constitute torture. As a result of this and other abuse, including regular beatings by the guard force responsible for quelling even the most minor infractions of the rules, El-Gharani has become deeply depressed, and has tried to commit suicide on several occasions.

A case without evidence

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