bobdina
08-23-2010, 11:46 AM
Judge: Terror Suspect Wasn’t Tortured
August 23, 2010
Miami Herald
An Army interrogator's tale of gang rape in an American prison didn't coerce Canadian captive Omar Khadr to confess to anything while he was held as a teen terror suspect in Afghanistan, a military commissions judge said in a Guantanamo war court ruling made public Friday.
Army Col. Patrick Parrish, the judge, also found "no credible evidence" of torture in the U.S. military's interrogations of the Toronto-born Khadr, who was nearly dead when captured in a Special Forces raid on a suspected al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
"While the accused was 15 years old at the time he was captured, he was not immature for his age," Parrish wrote in a nine-page ruling dated Tuesday.
In it, the judge rejected a defense request to exclude Khadr's confessions to U.S. interrogators from his war crimes trial on grounds of coercion and torture.
Khadr, now 23, is accused of hurling a grenade that fatally wounded a Special Forces medic in the firefight and also allegedly conspiring with al-Qaida by planting land mines meant to maim or kill U.S. forces in the first year of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
"There is no credible evidence that the accused was ever tortured," the judge wrote, "even using a liberal interpretation considering the accused's age."
The trial formally opened Aug. 12 before a seven-member jury of senior American military officers but went into a month or so recess after Khadr's lone defense attorney collapsed in court. Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson was airlifted from the remote base in southeast Cuba to the United States for medical treatment. He was being tested for complications from gallbladder surgery.
Defense attorneys argued that Khadr's first interrogation, coupled with the rape scenario, so soon after U.S. medical forces saved him from chest wounds and eye injuries led the young Canadian to tell his captors whatever they wanted to hear.
But Parrish wrote that "he had sufficient training, education and experience to understand the circumstances in which he found himself."
Rather than the rape story, the judge said, it was the military's discovery of a videotape at the bombed out site of the July 2002 firefight that showed Khadr learning to make and plant landmines that got him to start offering incriminating statements.
The video is a key piece of trial evidence, which Parrish also allowed to be admitted at the trial.
Moreover, the veteran Army judge gave greater weight to the credibility of former and present U.S. military who testified at a pretrial hearing because they underwent "the crucible of cross-examination," while Khadr chose to not allow prosecutors to question him on a sworn affidavit that alleged a long list of abuse.
Former Sgt. Joshua Claus, a former Army interrogator subsequently court-martialed for detainee abuse, testified at a May pretrial hearing that he tried to soften Khadr up with a fictional tale of an Afghan captive who was sent to an American prison and raped by "four big black guys."
But the judge found "there is no evidence that the story caused the accused to make any incriminating statements then or in the future."
In making the document public on Friday, the Pentagon censored the names of a number of pretrial witnesses whose identities were made public at the summertime hearings.
They included a retired Army Reserves colonel, ophthalmologist Marjorie Mosier, who testified by name that she saved the Canadian's sight in a surgery at a military hospital in Afghanistan as well as another court-martialed former Army interrogator, Damien Corsetti.
Corsetti, known to Bagram detainees as "Monster," testified by name that he felt sorry for the captive teenager who found himself "probably in one of the worst places on Earth" after his capture.
August 23, 2010
Miami Herald
An Army interrogator's tale of gang rape in an American prison didn't coerce Canadian captive Omar Khadr to confess to anything while he was held as a teen terror suspect in Afghanistan, a military commissions judge said in a Guantanamo war court ruling made public Friday.
Army Col. Patrick Parrish, the judge, also found "no credible evidence" of torture in the U.S. military's interrogations of the Toronto-born Khadr, who was nearly dead when captured in a Special Forces raid on a suspected al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
"While the accused was 15 years old at the time he was captured, he was not immature for his age," Parrish wrote in a nine-page ruling dated Tuesday.
In it, the judge rejected a defense request to exclude Khadr's confessions to U.S. interrogators from his war crimes trial on grounds of coercion and torture.
Khadr, now 23, is accused of hurling a grenade that fatally wounded a Special Forces medic in the firefight and also allegedly conspiring with al-Qaida by planting land mines meant to maim or kill U.S. forces in the first year of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
"There is no credible evidence that the accused was ever tortured," the judge wrote, "even using a liberal interpretation considering the accused's age."
The trial formally opened Aug. 12 before a seven-member jury of senior American military officers but went into a month or so recess after Khadr's lone defense attorney collapsed in court. Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson was airlifted from the remote base in southeast Cuba to the United States for medical treatment. He was being tested for complications from gallbladder surgery.
Defense attorneys argued that Khadr's first interrogation, coupled with the rape scenario, so soon after U.S. medical forces saved him from chest wounds and eye injuries led the young Canadian to tell his captors whatever they wanted to hear.
But Parrish wrote that "he had sufficient training, education and experience to understand the circumstances in which he found himself."
Rather than the rape story, the judge said, it was the military's discovery of a videotape at the bombed out site of the July 2002 firefight that showed Khadr learning to make and plant landmines that got him to start offering incriminating statements.
The video is a key piece of trial evidence, which Parrish also allowed to be admitted at the trial.
Moreover, the veteran Army judge gave greater weight to the credibility of former and present U.S. military who testified at a pretrial hearing because they underwent "the crucible of cross-examination," while Khadr chose to not allow prosecutors to question him on a sworn affidavit that alleged a long list of abuse.
Former Sgt. Joshua Claus, a former Army interrogator subsequently court-martialed for detainee abuse, testified at a May pretrial hearing that he tried to soften Khadr up with a fictional tale of an Afghan captive who was sent to an American prison and raped by "four big black guys."
But the judge found "there is no evidence that the story caused the accused to make any incriminating statements then or in the future."
In making the document public on Friday, the Pentagon censored the names of a number of pretrial witnesses whose identities were made public at the summertime hearings.
They included a retired Army Reserves colonel, ophthalmologist Marjorie Mosier, who testified by name that she saved the Canadian's sight in a surgery at a military hospital in Afghanistan as well as another court-martialed former Army interrogator, Damien Corsetti.
Corsetti, known to Bagram detainees as "Monster," testified by name that he felt sorry for the captive teenager who found himself "probably in one of the worst places on Earth" after his capture.