Thanks to everyone for covering this. One of the best events I’ve seen on tumblr.
At 12 hours, 52 minutes, Senator Rand Paul has yielded the floor and completed his filibuster.
Why don’t you tell us what you really think, Ryan?
Success
(Source: thepeoplesrecord)
leptiir:theneighbourhoodsuperhero:
[shown above] Ruhal Ahmed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, in an interview in which he discusses Omar Khadr. Ahmed stammers,
“I think he was a strong kid.
I think, you know, being much older, much older than him, I did feel that, sometimes, I needed to look out for him and I think so did the other prisoners around him feel the same. But obviously, being in Guantanamo, you can’t really look out for one another.
Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s difficult you know, today I’m here, and I’m, I’m thinking of, thinking of him and he’s still in prison and he’s still, still a kid. I don’t know really what I would say to him. It doesn’t seem, it doesn’t seem fair that he’s still there and, and I’m here.”
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.
Ahmed, who was imprisoned in the cell next to him for some time, reported that Khadr would return from interrogations (where he would be tortured) crying and would huddle in a corner of his cell with his blanket over his head.
Shafiq Rasul, another former Guantanamo Bay detainee, stated that although Khadr was forced to mature due to his harsh treatment and torture, he still had the mentality of a child. Guantanamo Bay’s Muslim chaplain James Yee confirmed this by reporting that Khadr had been given a Mickey Mouse book in a surprising act of kindness by one of his interrogators, and that he slept with it clutched to his (injured) chest. Muneer Ahmad, one of Khadr’s first attorneys, reported that at their first meeting at Guantanamo, Khadr asked for nothing other than colouring books, car magazines and pictures of big animals and played with the attorney’s ink pens and digital watch.
Khadr has been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, and is now 25 years old.
If you want to know more about Omar Khadr, please check this out. Omar has himself said: “… if the world doesn’t see all this, to what world am I being released to? A world of hate … and discrimination.” He’s right, it is a world full of hate & discrimination, a world full of hatred towards everyone who isn’t white, Christian & straight.
honestly, what the fuck.
Even if he were a member of Al Qaeda I don’t think he should be treated this way.
(Source: theantistatist)
(Source: laliberty)
Above is a picture of Omar Khadr, abducted at 15, now 25 years old, he has spent a third of his life at Guantánamo Bay for a crime he never committed.
“Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in 2002 and conspiring with Al Qaeda. There is no credible evidence to substantiate the charges, some of which date to when he was 11 years old. Charges were not even brought against him until 2007. If convicted, the Obama administration will seek a life sentence for Khadr, prosecutor David Iglesias indicated.
Army Col. Pat Parrish, the tribunal’s presiding judge, on Monday denied defense appeals to bar confessions Khadr made under torture. In hearings held in May an unnamed U.S. military officer admitted that his interrogation unit threatened to gang rape and kill Khadr if he did not cooperate with an interrogation session at Afghanistan’s notorious Bagram air base in 2002.
A U.S. military psychiatrist has said that Khadr, who has now spent a third of his life at Guantánamo, is under extreme psychological stress after years of living through torture, abuse and appalling conditions. He has been subjected to stress positions, beatings, humiliations—including being used as a “human mop” to clean up urine, threatened attack with dogs, long periods of extreme isolation and sensory as well as sleep deprivation. (Read more here)How come we barely hear about cases like these in the news? If it happend to a white christian male, we would constantly hear about it, but when it happens to a muslim from Afghanistan, silence.
Omar Khadr has himself said:
Khadr wrote to his Canadian attorney Dennis Edney, on May 27. “And if the world doesn’t see all this, to what world am I being released to? A world of hate … and discrimination.”
Lt. Col. Frakt has said:
“It is appalling that the Obama administration is allowing charges to go forward in the military commissions against Omar Khadr. Clearly, Omar Khadr, as a juvenile of 15 at the time of his alleged offences, could not be tried as an adult in federal court, so they are allowing him to be tried as an adult in the military commissions, potentially making him the first child soldier to be tried and convicted as a war criminal in world history.” (Read more here)