STOP THE MADNESS

Omar Khadr, a sixteen year old Guantanamo Bay detainee weeps uncontrollably, clutching at his face and hair as he calls out for his mother to save him from his torment. “Ya Ummi, Ya Ummi (Oh Mother, Oh Mother),” he wails repeatedly, hauntingly with each breath he takes.

The surveillance tapes, released by Khadr’s defence, show him left alone in an interrogation room for a “break” after he tried complaining to CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) officers about his poor health due to insufficient medical attention. Ignoring his complaints and trying to get him to make false confessions, the officers get frustrated with the sixteen year old’s tears and tell him to get himself together by the time they come back from their break.

“You don’t care about me. Nobody cares about me,” he sobs to them.

The tapes show how the officers manipulated Khadr into thinking that they were helping him because they were also Canadian and how they taunted him with the prospect of home (Canada), (good) food, and familial reunion.

Khadr, a Canadian, was taken into US custody at the age of fifteen, tortured and refused medical attention because he wouldn’t attest to being a member of Al Qaeda, even though he was shot three times in the chest and had shrapnel embedded in his eyes and right shoulder. As a result, Khadr’s left eye is now permanently blind, the vision in his right eye is deteriorating, he develops severe pain in his right shoulder when the temperature drops, and he suffers from extreme nightmares.

He has been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, suffering extremely harsh interrogations and torture (methods), and is now 25 years old.

27 now, and still imprisoned

i’m in complete shock. i’m so nauseous right now. how is this possible? i don’t know what to do w/ this information. i share it because i can’t imagine that anyone else knows about this. the boy has been incarcerated, tortured, and basically maimed allll w/out a trial. my heart hurts :/

Empire.

Omar is no longer in Guantanamo. Left without options, he pled guilty to war crimes so that he’d be given an eight year sentence and be able to transfer to a prison in Canada. He remains in prison there. His story is absolutely heartbreaking. This was a 15 year old boy who has been described as crying out for his mother, who slept holding a Mickey Mouse book one of his captors gave him. A teenager taken from his family, tortured, humiliated, threatened with rape, and falsely imprisoned for 12 years now. You can help Omar by writing to him, donating for his defense, and signing petitions for him. Please visithttp://freeomarakhadr.com to learn more.

Look at these pictures. Burn the images into your minds.

This is the War on Terror.

Much like the War on Drugs, it aims to create prisoners rather than stop what it portends to be at war with.

Confining, torturing, and entrapping innocent people does not keep one person safe from any terror threat.

Not.

A single.

One.

This is what happens when “success” is measured by arrests and convictions. 

This is a microcosm of what we as a society - in the US and in any nation that explicitly or tacitly supports these tactics - has become.

We can’t be silent. We have to end this. We’re the only ones who can, because governments aren’t going to stop it - primarily because they’re the ones doing it.