TORONTO — Lawyers of a Canadian kid held in the notorious US Guantanamo Bay have released a video tape showing the youngest detainee crying during interrogation sessions.
"I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything!" cried Omar Khadr in the ten-minute footage, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Tuesday, July 15.
The video shows Khadr being questioned by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents in February, 2003 at Guantanamo Bay.
It shows Khadr wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and sitting at plain wooden table in an apparently windowless cell.
In the tape, apparently shot through the flaps of a ventilation shaft, Khadr is asked what he knows about Al-Qaeda and questioned about his Islamic faith.
Watch the Video
At times, he weeps uncontrollably and pulls at his hair in despair.
He also displays his wounds to his interrogators.
"You don't care about me," Khadr cried several times before he puts his head in both his hands and starting sobbing uncontrollably.
At one point, an interrogator tries to calm Khadr, who is clearly distraught, saying he needs to get a "bite to eat" and adding: "I understand this is stressful."
When Khadr complains his compatriots have not helped his case, an interrogator replies: "We can't do anything for you."
Khadr, who was 16 at the time of interrogations, was captured in Afghanistan at the age 15.
He has no vision in his left eye and his right eye is deteriorating because of shrapnel embedded in the eye's membrane.
He still has shrapnel in his right shoulder, and it causes the metal detectors at the prison camp to go off.
In 2007, US military judges dropped all war crimes charges against Khadr in a stunning blow and embarrassment to the Bush administration.
He was exonerated of killing a US soldier with a grenade and wounding another in 2002.
Sleep Deprivation
The tape comes after Canadian media reports that government documents showed Khadr was forcibly deprived of sleep by his US captors to soften him up for questioning.
"As documents released last week show, Guantanamo Bay authorities manipulated Omar's environment outside the interrogation room before Canadian interrogations to induce cooperation within the interrogation room," said Khadr's lawyer Nathan Whitling.
Citing government files released by court order, Canadian media said Khadr was moved to a different cell every three hours to make him more amenable to talking in what US authorities described as their "frequent-flyer program."
"At three-hours intervals he is moved to another cell block, thus denying him uninterrupted sleep and a continued change of neighbors," said a report by the Foreign Intelligence Division of Canada's Foreign Affairs department.
According to the documents, Khadr, following a meeting with Canadian officials in March 2004, was due to be placed in isolation for three weeks before being interviewed again.
Human rights groups have demanded Khadr be released from Guantanamo, saying his age at the time of capture precludes any war crime proceeding.
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