The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr

In his debriefing, Abdurahman Khadr told the CIA that only ten percent of the detainees at Guantanamo "are really dangerous." The rest, he said, "are people that don't have anything to do with it, don't even . . . understand what they're doing here." One innocent man, Abdurahman said, was given up by his own son for $5,000. Another detainee was nothing more than a drug user: Every time the MPs came around, he begged them for hashish: "He doesn't even know what he's doing here," Abdurahman said. "Truly a drug addict, not Al Qaeda at all."

One military-intelligence officer, speaking anonymously, told a reporter that more than seventy-five percent of the detainees at Guantanamo are innocent. When the government recently prepared Summaries of Evidence for its 517 detainees in an attempt to justify its "enemy combatant" designation, only eight percent were "definitively identified" as Al Qaeda fighters. Sixty-six percent have no definitive connection to Al Qaeda at all. The detention camps of Guantanamo Bay are filled with shepherds, taxi drivers, farmers, small businessmen, drug addicts, homeless people and children.

For Rick Wilson and Muneer Ahmad, this nasty truth led to an unnerving conclusion: After the invasion of Afghanistan, the Bush administration effectively kidnapped hundreds of innocent people because they looked like Arabs and shipped them to a detention facility designed to torture them nonstop and in perpetuity. If the president were tried in the Hague, the prosecution would have an easy case.

Before the Supreme Court extended the protection of the Geneva Convention to Guantanamo detainees, the government charged Omar Khadr with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and aiding the enemy. The allegations were odd: Khadr was a soldier fighting in support of a national army. The Geneva Convention sensibly prohibits any government from charging enemy soldiers with murder for acting like soldiers. It is hard to say how the government will now reformulate its charges; it is hard to say how long Congress and the administration will spend designing tribunals that satisfy the Supreme Court. For the moment, however, Omar Khadr remains an enemy combatant and, therefore, subject to unlimited solitary confinement.

Ahmad and Wilson have filed motions in federal court seeking to enjoin the continuing torture and inhumane confinement of their client. Thus far, none has been granted. Except for a brief hiatus, Omar Khadr has been alone in a cell at Guantanamo Bay for close to four years. Four years is nearly a quarter of his life. Since he was caught, he has grown eight inches. It is nearly impossible for him to believe that he will ever be released, and his daily life remains filled with menace: He is so conditioned to abuse in captivity that he is incapable of believing he will ever be free of it.

A year and a half ago, Dr. Eric Trupin predicted that Omar Khadr would suffer serious permanent damage unless he was immediately moved into a humane detention facility, convinced that he was safe from all injury and provided with acute psychological care. Such a course of treatment, if ever administered, will come several years too late. It is possible that Omar's mental life will progressively fracture into suicide attempts, hallucinations and paranoia. Having lived out the final years of his adolescence in Guantanamo Bay, he has learned nothing about the conventions of adult life, but he has as deep an understanding of powerlessness as any person can.

In the summer of 2005, Omar joined 200 other detainees in a hunger strike. They were protesting their unlimited detention without due process. Within a few weeks, guards began to beat them and force-feed them through the nose with thick tubes. From the diary of Omar Deghayes, a detainee who participated in the strike: Omar Khadr is very sick in our block. He is throwing [up] blood. They gave him cyrum [serum] when they found him on the floor in his cell. Omar was carried to the hospital. As he was being moved back to his cell, he collapsed. The guards beat him.

The resolve of the strikers deteriorated, and the strike ended. No concessions were made.

>> This article appears in the August 24th issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine.

>> Plus: For the extraordinary story of a veteran foot soldier who fought for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and joined the jihad in Iraq, see our 2005 story, " The Insurgent's Tale."

Note: The author would like to express his gratitude to the following sources, whose excellent reporting he drew on for this article: Canada's National Post, for information on Omar Khadr's childhood; The New Yorker, for information on the SERE program; and PBS's Frontline, for information on the Khadr family.

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