Thread by @Garossino

Two US military photos of #Khadr at the scene of the firefight:
LEFT: as found, totally buried under large rocks/rubble of collapsed roof;
RIGHT: in same position with debris cleared

I have questions 1/

1. Was Khadr shot before or after the photo on the left?

Comparing the photos, there is a very slim outline of his left shoulder that looks identical to the image on the right.

iow, he appears not to have been moved at all, but merely had debris cleared. 2/

2. If he was shot before the first photo on left was taken, where are the entry marks to indicate that?

Looking again at the upper left shoulder, and the gunshot wound immediately below in the 2nd image, it appears clear that this happened between the 1st and 2nd photos. 3/

3. This seems highly consistent w some of the reported accounts (now harder to find as some docs are removed from the web) that the soldiers did not detect Khadr until someone stood on him.

Theory: That the soldier who stood on him felt him move underneath and shot him. 4/

4. (fwiw I would not blame anyone for firing at a perceived combatant in the immediate aftermath of a deadly exchange)

But this version is not what the US military claimed & Khadr pled guilty to.

5. Prosecution claimed that US soldier in the compound came upon Khadr standing/kneeling against some brush and shot him in the back.

So how did he get totally buried by rubble before he was shot?

And how did he throw a grenade while lying face down totally buried under rubble?

6. Notable that Khadr does not appear to have moved AT ALL between the first photo (before he was shot) and the second (after).

IE, he appears totally unconscious in both, and not to have moved at all, even when shot twice in the back.

7. Was Khadr even conscious at any time after he was buried beneath the collapsed wall/roof (during the bombing of the compound) and when he was shot upon his discovery after the firefight?

8. No witness saw him throw the grenade.

The only witness against him is the soldier who shot him. But that account of the shooting is itself clearly false.

And the physical evidence shows Khadr could not physically have thrown the grenade that killed Speers.

9. Either Khadr was a superhuman 15 year old, or the US military has supported a totally false narrative.

Why would they do this?

10. There are clues.

The criminal prosecution commenced years after Khadr was captured. So why the delay, and why did they start it?

See the timeline. Prosecution commenced in 2005--3 years after the fire-fight.

By then Khadr was a political hot potato and so was Abu Ghraib.

The criminal prosecution appears to have commenced in response to legal initiatives by Gitmo detainees to win release.

Almost all other western countries had got their citizens out of Gitmo, but not Canada & Khadr.

12. It turned out that Khadr, a Canadian teenage boy, had been interrogated at Bagram base by someone who had actually killed detainees, using the same techniques as later used at Abu Ghraib: nytimes.com/2005/05/20/wor…

eg, threats of rape, non-treatment of injuries, etc.

13. Abu Ghraib was roiling in the political background, a Canadian teenager was at Gitmo with hundreds of adults, no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq...

Quagmire yada yada

The whole thing was turning into a sh*tshow.

Ie, there was pressure to justify this detention.

14. And let’s not forget the very real possibility that Speer was actually killed by friendly fire.

And everyone knew it. How do you tell the family?

It wouldn’t be the first time the US military covered up a politically sensitive friendly fire death: npr.org/templates/stor…

15. NB, Any confession by Khadr shd be discounted bc a) it contradicts the best evidence on the scene (photographs) so is probably false;
b) it was involuntary & obtained under threat of rape;
c) it’s a textbook example of how to get a false confession from a kid.

16. But the BIGGEST question is why Canada abandoned its duty to protect its citizens and why Khadr continues to be politically exploited by the right every time he turns around.

Because he’s a Muslim and he’s brown.

17. If a white teenager had been this badly abused/exploited by his parents, put in harms way, shot & captured by US military in a firefight, he’d have been returned to Cda by Christmas in 2002.

There’d have been no Gitmo, no solitary confinement, no campaign of hate & fear.

18. The right doesn’t hate Omar Khadr, they love him.

And the media love him too.

The political & media payoff for letting this lie fester for years is too golden to resist.

But it is a lie. The whole thing, start to finish.

We have a duty to call it out.

FIN

#cdnpoli