A videotape of the interrogation at Guantanamo Bay of a terror suspect who was captured as a 15-year-old has been released to the public.
Omar Khadr's lawyers released excerpts of their client being questioned by Canadian officials at the US facility in 2003. The video provides insight into the effects of prolonged interrogation and detention on the Guantanamo prisoner.
Documents released last week indicated that Mr Khadr was deprived of uninterrupted sleep at Guantanamo before an interview by a Canadian investigator. He was aged 16 at the time of the interview.
In the video, a Canadian Security Intelligence Services agent is shown questioning Mr Khadr about the events leading up to his capture as an enemy combatant. The Canadian citizen is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan.
The videos, released after a long legal battle, show how Mr Khadr initially believed that the Canadians were there to help him.
"Omar appears happy and cooperative on Day One," lawyer Nathan Whitling wrote in a statement accompanying the five hours of video. "But by Day Two (February 14th, 2003), Omar has come to understand that the CSIS agents are not going to help him, and he is in despair."
The seven-hour video, taken over four days of interviews, was originally marked "Secret/No Foreign" by the US agencies that created them.
At one point, Mr Khadr says he was tortured while at the US military detention centre at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where he was first detained after his arrest in 2002. He raises his orange shirt to show the wounds he sustained.
Documents released earlier this month showed that US authorities deprived Khadr of sleep ahead of the interview, putting him in a "frequent-flyer program," where he was moved every three hours to make him more likely to talk.
Still pictures from the video show him filmed at plain wooden table in an apparently windowless cell. At times he buries his head in his hands or pulls at his hair in apparent frustration.
Khadr tells the interrogators, "You don't care about me", complains of poor medical treatment and removes his jumpsuit to show scars from the serious wounds he suffered during the firefight in Afghanistan in which the medic died.
He has alleged US interrogators repeatedly threatened to rape him or send him to another country to be raped.
Critics of Khadr's treatment say he is a child soldier who should be rehabilitated rather than punished. But Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has brushed off calls to intervene with Washington, saying Khadr faces serious charges.
Mr Khadr, who is now 21, is expected go on trial before the Guantanamo prison camp's war crimes court on charges of murdering the US soldier. He is one of two Guantanamo detainees captured as juveniles and charged with crimes that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Reuters