Video images of a sobbing 16-year-old boy provided the first glimpse yesterday of interrogations inside the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

The once-secret footage shows Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured in Afghanistan. He is the youngest detainee in the War on Terror and the last Western citizen being held at the US military prison in Cuba.

The video, released by Mr Khadr’s lawyers after a legal battle with the Canadian Government, contains no violent interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. It shows Mr Khadr whimpering as he buries his head in his hands during questioning by Canadian intelligence agents over four days in 2003.

An official report says that Mr Khadr later spent three weeks in a “frequent flyer” programme — the euphemism for sleep deprivation where he was moved from cell to cell every three hours.

Mr Khadr was 15 when he was captured in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 after allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier. He says that he was tortured at the US military detention centre at Bagram air base in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantanamo, where he has spent the past six years.

In the video Mr Khadr, now 21, lifts his orange prison shirt to show still unhealed wounds. “I have lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything,” he says. “No, you still have your eyes, and your feet are still at the ends of your legs,” the interrogator replies. He complains that he cannot move his arms and says he has not received proper medical attention, despite requests. “They look like they’re healing well to me,” the agent says of the injuries.

He later tells the interrogator that he wants to go back to Canada. The interrogator quips that he wants to stay in Guantanamo with Mr Khadr. “The weather’s nice. No snow,” he says.

The video is the first time that the public have seen any interrogation of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo. Its release provoked soul-searching in Canada, the only Western nation that has not repatriated its citizens from Guantanamo.

“Although we only get a small glimpse of the workings of Guantanamo Bay, this video is still disturbing,” said Sara MacNeice, of the human rights group Amnesty International.

The Canadian Government was told by the country’s Supreme Court in May to turn over key evidence to Mr Khadr’s lawyers. Last month, a judge ordered the surrender of 7½ hours of footage shot inside a windowless Guantanamo interrogation room, some from a ventilation panel.

Mr Khadr’s lawyers released the video in the hope of shaming the Canadian Government into repatriating him. They describe him as a child soldier, tortured into making confessions. Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, again refused to intervene yesterday, saying that Canada would rely on a US military trial. Mr Khadr is to go before a US military tribunal at Guantanamo in October for five alleged war crimes, including the death of US Sergeant Christopher Speer.

An official report made public yesterday said that Jim Gould, a Canadian Foreign Ministry official who questioned Mr Khadr in 2004, considered him a “thoroughly screwed-up young man”. The diplomat also criticised the United States, saying: “All those persons who have been in positions of authority over him have abused him and his trust, for their own purposes. In this group can be included his parents and his grandparents, his associates in Afghanistan and fellow detainees in Camp Delta and the US military.”

The report said that Mr Khadr was originally a “mama’s little boy” but had become uncooperative with interrogators after finding “pseudo-parents among the other detainees”. In an effort to soften him up, he was given a photograph of his family but denied knowing anyone in it. Mr Khadr’s Egyptian-born father was an alleged al-Qaeda financier who was killed by Pakistani forces in 2003; his brother is fighting extradition from Canada to the US on terrorism charges.

“Left alone with the picture, and despite his shackles, he urinated on the picture,” the report said. “The MPs [military police] cleaned him, the picture and floor and again left him alone with the picture — after shortening his shackles so he couldn’t urinate on the picture again. But, with the flexibility of youth, he was able to lower his trousers and again urinated on the picture.

“Again the MPs cleaned up and left him alone with the picture. Assuming that he was no longer being watched, Omar laid his head beside the picture in what was an affectionate manner.”

The prisoners

— 775 detainees have been held in Guantanamo Bay. About 420 have been released without charge

— Processing the detainees through the US federal court system could take years. Many of their home countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, do not want them back

— The US has reported more than 40 suicide attempts among prisoners since the camp opened

— The US Supreme Court has rebuked the Bush’s Administration three times for its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay

— Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain have both pledged to close the facility

Source: Times archive

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