London, April 29: A United States military court has held hearings to determine whether Guantanamo prison guards tortured a teenage Canadian suspect into confession.
A teenage Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr was captured in July 2002 after being accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan. He, eventually, admitted to the alleged offense.
Khadr’s lawyers insist that his confessions to interrogators were the illegal outcome of torture tactics practiced by US interrogators, Reuters reported.
However, FBI agent Robert Fuller claimed Wednesday that Khadr’s interrogation sessions were friendly, comfortable, and ‘even included snacks and bathroom breaks’.
Fuller reportedly questioned Khadr seven times while he was held at the Bagram US airbase in Afghanistan eight years ago.
Fuller was one of more than 30 US interrogators who questioned Khadr in at least 142 sessions at Bagram and at the Guantanamo Bay, according to Khadr’s defense lawyers.
A military judge agreed to review a sworn statement from Khadr, in which he insists on being forced to provide false confessions after being beaten, doused in freezing water, spat on, chained in painful positions, forced to urinate on himself and then used as a human mop, terrorized by barking dogs and subjected to sleep deprivation and rape threats.
The 23-year-old Khadr is the youngest, among the 183 captives held without charge, in the notorious Guantanamo detention center.
——-Agencies