- TORONTO -- A Canadian teenager
who has spent his formative years in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been tortured
by his U.S. captors, the teen's lawyers and relatives said Wednesday.
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- They urged Canadian officials to be more "outspoken"
in securing the legal rights of Omar Khadr, who has been detained since
he was captured in a deadly Afghanistan firefight with U.S. forces three
years ago, when he was just 15 years old. The lawyers accused Canada of
being complicit in the "torture" he is said to have suffered.
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- Mr. Khadr, an Afghanistan-raised Arab Canadian citizen
whose brothers and late father have also been detained as suspected terrorists,
was visited by his U.S. lawyers for four days this past fall. They said
he had been mistreated by his captors and is traumatized by his ordeal.
"He had just turned 18 at the time we were there," said laywer
Muneer Ahmed. "He a young 18. He's a child."
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- Mr. Khadr has not been formally charged with any crime,
but U.S. forces have declared him an enemy combatant and accused him of
killing an American soldier with a grenade and also laying landmines meant
to blow up U.S. vehicles. He has not been given any of the legal rights
typically afforded to prisoners of war.
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- In a new affidavit, the lawyers allege that American
soldiers traumatized Mr. Khadr by physically abusing him, threatening him
with rape, and using him as a "human mop" to clean up his own
urine. The allegations are the latest in a long series of complaints of
human rights abuses to be levied by a detainees against the U.S. soldiers
who run the detainment facility on the coast of Cuba.
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- The teenager is said to suffer recurring nightmares that
he is shot during interrogations.
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- Mr. Khadr's mother and grandmother attended the press
conference, at times weeping. The mother, Maha Elsamnah, had lawyer Dennis
Edney read a prepared statement. ìAs a mother, I beg every Canadian
mother and father to get justice for my son and bring him home," she
said.
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- "Canadians always stand for justice," she said.
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- A year ago, Ms. Elsamanh shocked Canadians when she appeared
in a television interview to speak of how terrorist training camps in Afghanistan
were great places for her four Canadian sons to learn discipline. She and
her husband were friends with al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman
Al-Zawahiri, and fled the Taliban-controlled country when the U.S. forces
invaded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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- The father was killed by the Pakistan military in 2003,
and the youngest son, Karim, was crippled in that attack. The other three
Khadr sons have also been detained as terrorism suspects - including Omar,
who was captured in 2002; Abdurahaman, 21 who was released from Guantanamo
Bay in 2003 after agreeing to work as a spy for the Americans; and Abdullah,
23, who is believed to have been captured in Pakistan this past fall.
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- Mr. Edney, the Khadr family's Edmonton-based lawyer,
is planning on launching a legal action on behalf of Abdullah, but refused
to discuss that case, saying the press conference was meant only to draw
attention to the plight of Omar Khadr.
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- Mr. Edney, did, however, compare Omar's case to that
of Maher Arar and William Sampson - Canadian nationals who complain that
Ottawa was complicit in torture they suffered in Middle Eastern prisons.
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