"Sad" tape shows Gitmo inmate crying for help

16-year-old seen begging during interrogation

OTTAWA (AFP)

A Canadian teenage detainee cried, begged for help and removed his shirt to show his battle scars in the first video of an interrogation in Guantanamo released Tuesday, sparking calls for his release.

Omar Khadr, whom U.S. authorities want to try on terrorism charges for the killing of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, is seen while undergoing several hours of questioning in February 2003 by Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents at the U.S. navy prison camp in Cuba.

"Help me, help me, help me," Khadr, just 16 at the time, says repeatedly for 20 minutes in one segment, weeping, holding his head in his hands.

The video was released by attorneys for Khadr, who are seeking to secure his release from Guantanamo, arguing his actions in Afghanistan and his age at the time he was captured preclude his being tried by the Americans.

"This kid has suffered enough. This kid needs to come home. This kid is not a terrorist," said Dennis Edney, one of Khadr's lawyers.

The footage covers seven and a half hours of questioning over four days. It depicts a dejected young man, tense from the pang of injuries suffered in the four-hour U.S. attack on an Al-Qaeda compound, during which he was shot at least twice in the back by U.S. soldiers.

In one excerpt, Khadr, left with no vision in one eye and deteriorating sight in the other because of shrapnel embedded in the eye membrane from the fight, tugs at his hair and pulls his orange prisoner suit over his head to show his interrogator his battle scars.

"I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything," he wails.

"You look like you're doing well to me," the interrogator says in the video, his face blurred. "I'm not a doctor but I think you're getting good medical care."

"You say this is healthy?" Khadr asks. "I can't move my arm."

"No, you still have your eyes, and your feet are still at the ends of your legs," the interrogator replies, urging him to cooperate.

"You don't care about me," Khadr tells the interrogator. "Nobody cares about me."

Sister says it's 'very sad'

Khadr's sister Zaynab told CBC public radio: "I'd like him to come home, and I'd like for all this to just end sometime soon. What's happening is not right. It's not just. It's not humane ... And it's very sad."

In another segment of the video, apparently shot through the flaps of a ventilation shaft, Khadr is asked what he knows about Al-Qaeda and is questioned about his Islamic faith.

At one point, an interrogator tries to calm Khadr, who is clearly distraught, saying he needs to get a "bite to eat" and adding: "I understand this is stressful."

When Khadr complains his compatriots have not helped his case and says he just wants to return home, the interrogator replies: "We can't do anything for you."

Khadr's Canadian lawyer Nathan Whitling said U.S. authorities "manipulated Omar's environment outside the interrogation room before Canadian interrogations, to induce cooperation within the interrogation room," citing documents released last week.

According to the files from the Foreign Intelligence Division of Canada's Foreign Affairs department, Khadr was forcibly deprived of sleep by his U.S. captors to soften him up for questioning by the Canadian agents.

The documents also said that after Canadian officials met with Khadr in March 2004, he was due to be placed in isolation for three weeks before being interviewed again.

A Canadian federal judge studying the documents said Khadr's treatment violated international laws on human rights, and ordered them released to Khadr's lawyers last month.

Human rights groups and Canada's opposition parties have since demanded Khadr be released from Guantanamo, saying his age at the time of capture precludes any war crime proceeding.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters at a G8 summit in Japan earlier this month that he would not ask the U.S. government to repatriate Khadr. His office held firm on Tuesday.

Khadr is the youngest detainee at Guantanamo, arrested in 2002 when he was 15, and accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan.

He has been held at the U.S. facility ever since and is expected to face a U.S. military tribunal in October.