Mother breaks family's silence on Khadr tapes
Last Updated: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 | 12:17 PM ET
CBC News
Omar Khadr's mother made a desperate plea for her son's return after viewing videotapes from 2003 that show her son weeping uncontrollably and begging for his mother.
Maha Elsamnah, mother of Omar Khadr speaks with the Canadian Press at her home in Toronto on Tuesday. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)The videotapes show Canadian intelligence officers questioning Khadr over several days in February 2003 and were released Tuesday, providing his mother and the world with the first glimpse of Khadr in six years.
Khadr was captured and sent to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002, following a deadly firefight with soldiers in Afghanistan. He has been detained at the prison ever since on charges of killing a U.S. soldier.
After hours of silence following the Tuesday release of the interrogation tapes of Khadr, Maha Elsamnah, who lives in Toronto with her other children, agreed to speak to the media.
"Just help this child for safety or get him some assistance. It doesn't matter political, humanitarian, any kind of assistance," she pleaded later Tuesday.
Elsamnah said she would "scream at everybody and say please do something" to help any child in a situation similar to Khadr's.
'I cried. I said, "O God, please answer his call. I can't answer."'—Maha Elsamnah, Omar Khadr's mother
"I wish anybody out there can do anything to help Omar, or to help any child in need. Any child anywhere," she said.
In an interview with the Canadian Press, Elsamnah also described the agony of hearing her son call out to her on the videotapes.
At one point, Khadr begins sobbing with his face in both his hands, chanting something over and over again. While it was first taken for "Kill me" or "Help me," Elsamnah says he was really saying the Arabic phrase for "My mother," which is "Ya ummi."
"My son is calling for me and I'm sitting here," said Elsamnah.
"I cried. I said, 'O God, please answer his call. I can't answer.' I wish I can tell him. What can I do? I'm here. I wish he can hear me answering back."
Referring to talks that Khadr should undergo rehabilitation if he's returned to Canada, his mother said she fully supports the idea.
"Omar will need somebody to reassure him that he still deserves to live."
Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, died fighting Pakistani forces in the fall of 2003 and was a reported supporter and financier for al-Qaeda.
Omar Khadr has five siblings, including a brother, Abdul Karim Khadr, who was paralyzed from the waist down in the same shootout that killed his father.
'Outright unfair and unacceptable'
Khadr's defence team secured the tapes under a court order in hopes the wrenching footage of their client, 16 at the time of the interviews, would spur outcry over the case and increase calls for his repatriation and rehabilitation in Canada.
Human rights groups have repeatedly called for Khadr's return due to the young age at which he was detained, saying he should be considered a child soldier as stated under international law.
On Wednesday, Liberal Senator and retired general Roméo Dallaire added his voice to the growing debate raging across the country about the Khadr case, criticizing the government for its handling of the case.
He noted that Canada has signed the Optional Protocol of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states that those under 18 years of age in armed conflict are not considered combatants, and should be demobilized, rehabilitated and reintegrated.
"You've got a young person traumatized by war, traumatized by having been in combat, traumatized by being injured and now put through a whole series of processes that continue that trauma," Dallaire said in an interview from Quebec City.
"And that is outright unfair and unacceptable."
Dallaire says his gravest concern is that Prime Minister Stephen Harper "wants to play outside the rules."
Harper's office reiterated Tuesday that the Canadian government would not seek Khadr's return to Canada, saying "there is a judicial process underway to determine Mr. Khadr's fate. This should continue."
Khadr, now 21, is the only Western foreigner still being held at the naval prison. He is scheduled to go on trial before a U.S. military commission in the fall.
With files from the Canadian Press
