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April 30, 2010

Gitmo Prisoner Skips Evidentiary Hearing
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At Guantanamo Bay, a Canadian prisoner boycotted his evidentiary hearing
Thursday after refusing to wear blacked-out goggles and sound-deafening
earmuffs while transported from his cell. The hearing is being held to
weight Omar Khadr’s claims he was tortured into falsely confessing to
killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Khadr was fifteen years old when
US troops imprisoned him in 2002. He says U.S. military guards beat him
and threatened him with rape after he arrived at Guantanamo that same
year. Defense attorney Barry Coburn said Khadr is still being
mistreated.

Barry Coburn: “We are just extremely, extremely concerned about what Mr.
Khadr is suffering through and I think it was probably obvious to
everyone in the courtroom that he appeared to be in extreme pain and I
think even was crying at one point. So, I mean, the notion of putting
tight, blacked out goggles on a person in this sort of physical
condition is something, without necessarily putting a particular label
on it, is something that I find extremely difficult to understand.”

Khadr later attended the afternoon session, where he occasionally broke
into tears. He is set to be tried later this year in the first military
tribunal of the Obama White House.



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