STAR EXCLUSIVE: Classified photos show Toronto-born Omar Khadr lying buried and hurt in a trench during a firefight in Afghanistan that killed a U.S. commando. His lawyers say that proves he couldn't have thrown the lethal grenade
2009/10/28 23:59:00
An exclusive photo, right, taken at Guantanamo prison shows what Omar Khadr looks like today (October, 2009), seven years after his capture at 15, left.
In the left photo (1), Omar Khadr is hidden under rubble from a collapsed roof. In the upper corner is an unnamed combatant killed by U.S. forces. In the right photo (2), Khadr is lying face down (body is highlighted), with his head pointing toward the combatant’s body and two bullet wounds in his back.
Here's how the July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan unfolded: 1. U.S. Special Forces carry out a ground and aerial assault of a suspected Al Qaeda compound. The occupants are armed. 2. A small group of soldiers enter the compound, believing the occupants are dead. Then firing begins and a grenade is thrown, fatally wounding U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer. 3. A U.S. soldier, identified as OC-1, reportedly ran toward the firing and saw an adult male lying on his side, moving, with an AK-47 beside him. OC-1 shoots him in the head, killing him. 4. A soldier identified as Soldier #2 walks into the alcove where the body is lying and feels the ground shift beneath his feet. 5. When the debris is pulled back they find Omar Khadr lying face down, semi-conscious. Michelle Shephard
Guantanamo
detainee Omar Khadr was buried face down under rubble, blinded by
shrapnel and crippled, at the time the Pentagon alleges he threw a
grenade that fatally wounded a U.S. soldier, according to classified
photographs and defence documents obtained by the Star.
The
pictures, which were taken following a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan
and have never been made public, show the then 15-year-old Canadian
covered in bricks and mud from the roof of a bombed compound.
The
body of an adult fighter – the unnamed man Khadr's lawyers contend
could have thrown the grenade that killed U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer –
lies beside him.
The photographs were part of an 18-page
submission presented earlier this year by Khadr's former military
defence team to an Obama administration task force investigating
Guantanamo.
While the defence's argument that it was physically
impossible for Khadr to have thrown the grenade first surfaced at a
Guantanamo hearing last year, the military judge would not release the
photos or declassify the written submissions.
The Pentagon is
expected to announce in the next three weeks whether Khadr's case will
be transferred to a Washington, D.C., criminal court, or go before a
military commission. The Toronto-born captive had been charged with
five war crimes, including murder for Speer's death, under the Bush
administration's Military Commissions Act. His case was suspended when
U.S. President Barack Obama took over the White House and vowed to shut
Guantanamo.
But the evidence contained in the defence document
raises doubts as to whether Obama's multi-agency task force would
proceed with murder charges against Khadr.
"Omar is actually
innocent of the allegation," write Khadr's military-appointed lawyers,
Cmdr. Walter Ruiz and Michel Paradis, along with his Canadian lawyers,
Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney.
"Omar suffered blinding
shrapnel wounds and severe injuries to the legs during the course of a
U.S. bombardment that crippled him before the attack."
The documents note that a soldier stood on top of Khadr's body before realizing someone was buried.
Layne
Morris, one of the soldiers injured in the 2002 firefight, is
frustrated at the time it has taken to decide Khadr's fate. In a
telephone interview from Utah on Wednesday, he said he doesn't
personally need a trial – "I've had closure, if that's what you can
call it." But he added he would be disappointed if Khadr isn't held
accountable for Speer's death.
"Whether he pulled the trigger or threw the grenade or not, I think he was part of it.
"I
think there needs to be a trial so people can say, `Here's what
happened and here's how it turned out,' instead of just going on in
limbo forever, which it seems to be doing now."
Morris was
airlifted from the scene because of an eye wound before Khadr was
captured. His injury forced him to retire from the army.
Guantanamo's chief prosecutor, U.S. Navy Capt. John Murphy, said in an interview with the Star
on Wednesday that Obama's task force is privy to all the classified
evidence and interrogators' notes and he remains confident Khadr will
be charged with murder.
Murphy, along with prosecutor Jeff Groharing, also briefed the task force this spring.
"There
is a substantial likelihood of conviction based on the evidence,"
Murphy said, declining to address questions about the photographs or
information that had not yet been made public.
Murphy noted that
two prosecution witnesses – a female interrogator identified only as
Interrogator 11 and FBI agent Robert Fuller – had already testified
that Khadr confessed to throwing the grenade.
But one of the
greatest challenges facing Obama's task force in deciding these cases
is whether statements made during interrogations will be discounted in
court as the product of torture.
U.S. Special Forces shot Khadr
twice in the back during his capture, and he was brought to the
American-operated prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, in critical condition.
During the three months before his transfer to Guantanamo, he was
interrogated more than 40 times for up to eight hours a day. His chief
interrogator, Joshua Claus, was later court-martialled in connection
with the death of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram.
Khadr claims
that during his questioning he was threatened with dogs, hung by his
wrists or put in stress positions, despite his injuries. He also
alleges he had a hood placed over his head and then soaked with water
until he began to suffocate, and had LED lights shone into his eyes,
injured by shrapnel.
"Though critics of the Bush administration
have at times been too quick to use the word, this can only be
described as torture," his lawyers argue in their submission.
Aside
from Khadr's statements, the prosecution's case also includes an
18-minute video that briefly shows Khadr taping together wires for what
look like improvised explosive devices, which have accounted for the
deaths and maiming of hundreds of NATO fighters in Afghanistan. The
Pentagon also claims he planted land mines (which the defence documents
contend Khadr helped U.S. forces "recover without incident").
Khadr's
family has also been a major factor in his case. His father,
Egyptian-born Canadian Ahmed Said Khadr, was a reputed financier for Al
Qaeda and was associated with Osama bin Laden and his second in
command, Ayman al Zawahiri. He allegedly "loaned" Omar, his second
youngest son, as a translator to associates within the Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group in the summer of 2002. The Pentagon claims Omar trained
with the group for a month before his capture. Pakistani forces killed
Omar's father in October 2003.
Prosecutors claim this evidence supports terrorism charges.
But
to try Omar Khadr, the Pentagon will have to overcome issues of the
Canadian's age at the time of the alleged crimes – a concern that
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the United Nations' Special Representative for
Children and Armed Conflict, has reportedly stressed during recent
meetings on Khadr's case with White House officials.
While
juveniles are often charged in criminal proceedings, Khadr was captured
during an armed conflict, and international law stipulates that minors
should be rehabilitated rather than prosecuted.
(The last prosecution of a child soldier was in the 1940s, following World War II.)
Khadr's
lawyers argued to the task force that Khadr is a perfect candidate for
rehabilitation, and they note that an Ottawa parliamentary committee
has already approved a plan for him that would integrate mental,
spiritual and social programs – and place legal restrictions on his
freedom and access to family members.
Retired U.S. Army
Brig.-Gen. and psychiatrist Stephen Xenakis is likely one of the people
who now knows Khadr most intimately, having spent hours talking with
him at Guantanamo in the past two years as part of a court-ordered
assessment.
"He's a very decent young man, very, very decent," Xenakis told the Star. "Kind-hearted, thoughtful, sensitive, and you look at him and you see this kid has had a tragic experience.
"Right now we don't talk about politics or ideological stuff. My sense is that he disavows all of that.
"Those are early childhood experiences, (and) they've been edited in his head so many different ways."
