In a chilling reminder that we really haven't progressed very much on detainee rights, a military judge has ruled:
In the first full war crimes tribunal of the Obama administration, a military judge held that a detainee who confessed to killing an American solider after he was threatened with being gang-raped to death if he did not cooperate may nonetheless have that confession used against him at trial
In May hearings, a man identified as Interrogator 1 said in testimony that he threatened Mr. Khadr with being gang-raped to death if he did not co-operate. That interrogator was later identified as former U.S. Army Sergeant Joshua Claus. He has also been convicted of abusing a different detainee and has left the military.
This is from the trial of Omar Khadr who was first captured at the age of 15 and who is now 23. So while it's somewhat comforting they've removed the psycho interrogator of a child from the military and a kinder, gentler interrogator replaced him, they are still going forward with the tainted evidence..against someone who the UN classifies as a child.
The military judge’s decision to admit a coerced confession raises even more troubling questions about whether this particular tribunal will reach accurate results. As the Supreme Court recognized almost 75 years ago, confessions extracted by "brutality and violence" are akin to "deliberate deception" of the court because they reveal little about a suspect’s guilt or innocence and everything about their very human desire to avoid or end torture. This principle obviously applies to Khadr. A prisoner who is convinced that they will be raped and murdered if they do not confess has nothing to lose — and what remains of their personal dignity to gain — by doing so.
Newsweek has an excellent story out today as to why Khadr shouldn't even be there..
So instead of subjecting the so-called worst of the worst to a military tribunal, last week the Obama administration fired up the old system in order to try a child soldier. Omar Khadr is everything we shouldn’t be trying before a military commission. At 23, he is the youngest detainee of the 176 remaining prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. He’s been there for eight years. As a Canadian citizen, he is the only Westerner there. Khadr is charged with being an "unlawful enemy combatant" (later changed to "unprivileged enemy belligerent"). At 15, he allegedly threw the grenade that killed Special Forces Sgt. Christopher Speer in Afghanistan. Under international law, children captured in combat are to be treated as victims, not soldiers, and their captors are meant to rehabilitate and repatriate them. Then there’s the question of physical abuse: Khadr’s attorneys say the prosecutors have relied on confessions extracted after Khadr was coerced, abused, and threatened with gang rape by military interrogators. Last week the military judge in the case decided to allow Khadr’s statements to be admitted, and they make up the bulk of the evidence against him.
Nobody disputes that there should be consequences for a teen who throws a grenade on a battlefield. The question is whether a lifetime in prison, after what must have felt like a lifetime at Gitmo, is proper.
Child soldier, Westerner, plus torture. It’s why ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner describes the case as "the perfect storm of what’s wrong with the military-commission system."
This is truly despicable and I am totally ashamed that our administration would let this farce proceed.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
http://www.newsweek.com/...