Omar Khayd was fifteen when he was arrested.
He was sixteen when a video – recently released by his lawyers – was recorded after he was deprived of sleep, not in some dictatorial hellhole that no one ever heard of, but in the Land of the Free.
Omar was captured in Afghanistan, accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier during a firefight.
The US government argued that Omar wasn’t a prisoner, and not entitled to the protection of the Geneva conventions.
And since he wasn’t on US soil, he wasn’t entitled to the protection of the US constitution.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court eventually told the executive branch to take a hike.
In the video, Omar shows his Canadian interrogators his wounds and tells them he was tortured at an air force base before he was taken from Afghanistan to Guantanamo.
The ICCL says it has evidence of at least two such ‘renditions’ through Ireland.
Today, the UN asked the Irish government to justify its failure to act on extraordinary rendition.
At time of writing, the government response is still unknown.
