Commentary: Tears at Guantanamo Bay

Omar Khadr, a young Canadian and al-Qaida detainee being held at Guantanamo Bay, made international news when videos of his interview with Canadian intelligence officers showed him breaking down and sobbing.

Khadr was not crying because he was under strenuous questioning. He broke down when the intelligence officer told him he was not taking Khadr back to Canada. The video, shot in early 2003 when Khadr was 16, is making international news because he was a teenager and he claims to have been tortured by the United States.

The media reports and some public reaction lost any rational perspective on why Khadr was being held in Guantanamo Bay. The video has fixated attention on the particular moment of a teenager’s vulnerability. The reason for Khadr’s detention disappeared in the media surge. All logic and sense of justice was eliminated in the reporting.

Review of the Khadr video shows him removing his shirt to display scars on his back that he says were the result of torture. In one segment at the end of the interview Khadr is crying and mumbling. He appears to be repeating “Kill me, kill me, kill me … .”  It is sad to see a teenager in this situation. While the video is compelling, it doesn’t tell why Khadr was in Guantanamo Bay.

In my opinion Khadr did not happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In researching Khadr it is obvious he has longstanding ties to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. His father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was a native of Egypt who immigrated to Canada. Ahmed Said Khadr became associated with al-Qaida in the 1990s when he operated charity organizations assisting Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The family (including Omar Khadr) lived in a housing compound in 1995 with bin Laden in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Bin Laden attended the wedding ceremony of Omar Khadr’s sister, Zaynab, on Sept. 9, 1999.

In 1995 Ahmed Said Khadr was held and later released by Pakistani authorities as a suspect in the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. His work with al-Qaida ended violently: On Oct. 2, 2003, a Pakistani Army helicopter killed him when it attacked a house in the province of Waziristand, in Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. Seven other al-Qaida members were killed and 18 captured. Two Pakistani soldiers also died.

Khadr’s older brothers, Abdullah and Abdurahman Khadr, received training by al-Qaida in the early 1990s at the Khalden Camp in Afghanistan. Abdurahman Khadr did not follow instructions and was removed from the camp. He became a CIA informant after being captured the Northern Alliance and U.S. forces in Afghanistan in late 2001. He worked with the CIA in Afghanistan and was offered money for his information on al- Qaida. He agreed to be sent to Guantanamo Bay to report to the CIA on fellow detainees. After he arrived, he learned that his brother, Omar, was being held in a nearby cell.

Omar Khadr had been sent to Guantanamo Bay after he was captured in Khost, Afghanistan, on July 27, 2002. U.S. forces accused him of throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher J. Speers and wounded another soldier during a firefight. Khadr, who was 15 at the time, was wounded in the back.

The U.S. Military Tribunal has charged Khadr with murder and other crimes because he was a member of a non-state terrorist group, not a member of a standing state army.

According to the Associated Press, last week a federal judge in Washington refused to block Khadr’s military trial, which is now scheduled for Jan. 26.

I believe Omar Khadr made his choice in how to behave. He is now caught and, like an American teenager charged with a crime, he is crying. His tears are the result of being caught, not tortured. He is learning the consequences of his actions, a very bitter pill. His situation is difficult, but I think we should save our tears for Sgt Speers’ widow and two small children.

Dan Dreibelbis is a retired FBI Special Agent who is teaching fraud investigation and investigative interviewing in Stevenson University’s graduate forensic program.