President Obama, Military Commissions and Torture

Dear Friends,

We do not read much in the mainstream media about the Military Commissions that are going on.  I came across a horrifying story today about Omar Khadr.  Mr. Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was 15 years old when he was arrested.  There are significant and substantive allegations that Mr. Khadr was tortured and that he was not a combatant but the victim of a U.S. air strike.  The defense attorneys have been denied access to most of the interrogators.  The information that was obtained in the first interrogations of Mr. Khadr turned out to be completely false. 

What are we doing?  What is being done in our names?  A child is being denied any semblance of a fair hearing and President Obama is in charge not President George W. Bush.

Here is a link to an update on the hearing as to the suppression of the evidence obtained through torture from Daphne Eviatar at the Huffington Post.  Here is a summary from Amy Goodman's show today on Democracy Now.  Here is the link to her show.

Gitmo Hearing Weighs Alleged Torture-Induced Confession

At Guantanamo Bay, a hearing has begun on whether the U.S. military elicited a false confession through the torture of a then-teenaged prisoner accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Canadian citizen Omar Khadr was fifteen years old when US troops imprisoned him in Afghanistan in 2002. He says U.S. military guards beat him and threatened him with rape after he arrived at Guantanamo that same year. Deputy Chief Defense Counsel Michael Berrigan said Khadr’s statements at the time should be ruled inadmissible.

Michael Berrigan: “The defense hopes that the statements that Omar Khadr has made that the government wants to admit as evidence against him will be suppressed and that means that they will not be allowed to be admitted in evidence against him at his commissions trial, which is currently scheduled for this summer.”

Kadhr is set to be tried later this year in the first military tribunal of the Obama White House. Alex Neve of Amnesty International Canada criticized Obama for continuing Bush-era policies.

Alex Neve: “I think we were expecting a lot more of the Obama administration. Obviously in January 2009 there was great hope and tremendous expectation that this whole sorry exercise in injustice here at Guantanamo Bay was going to come to a close and certainly by April 2010, we wouldn’t be facing any military commission hearings, let alone a hearing involving someone who was 15 years old at the time of the alleged offenses, someone who alleges a harrowing litany of torture and ill-treatment. That is astounding.”

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal