Omar Khadr is the youngest and only Westerner remaining in Guantanamo Bay. At the time of his capture and illegal detention by the US army in Afghanistan, Omar was only fifteen years old. The United Nations recognizes Omar as a “child soldier” who deserves rehabilitation, not retribution. Nonetheless, despite a worldwide outcry at the US and Canada for exercising  child abuse and illegal detention, ten years of incessant torture later, Omar still languishes in Guantanamo Bay.

In 2010, after eight years of imprisonment in which he maintained his innocence throughout, Omar was offered a plea deal by Guantanamo Bay military tribunal – commonly acknowledged as a kangaroo court – in which he was asked to plead guilty to war crimes in 2002 related to a firefight in Afghanistan which killed a U.S. Sgt. The choice given to Omar was the following: for not pleading guilty, he would be sentenced forty years of imprisonment; for pleading guilty, he would spend eight years of incarceration in Canada out of which one was to be served in Guantanamo. Canada agreed to repatriate Omar by October 2011, and, trusting that she would honour her deal, Omar took the risk of pleading guilty.

The US and Canada both remained silent long after October 2011, until April 16 2012, when the US Defence Secretary approved Omar’s transfer and turned to Canada to keep her part of the bargain. Omar’s lawyers announced his repatriation would be in effect by the end of May once Public Safety minister Victor Toews signs the required document. However, despite the fact that both the UN and Canada’s Supreme Court acknowledge Omar has been gravely mistreated, the Canadian government has never objected its young citizen’s maltreatment, let alone recognize its duty to allow Omar to return home. 

Alas, it comes as no surprise that over a month has passed while Toews delays in signing the document – perhaps in questionable hopes of letting Omar complete his detention in Guantanamo Bay as opposed to Canada – and Canadian PM Stephen Harper remains notoriously silent on the entire matter. Meantime, Canadians worldwide feel shame and disappointment for a country they once recognized as an advocate for human rights and justice. As the clock ticks and the world carries on playing its political games, Omar Khadr suffers in a windowless cell in solitary confinement, which he has been in since July 2011, shackled to the floor by an obsessively paranoid US government and a deafeningly silent Canadian government.

Nâzım Hikmet (1902 – 1963) was a Turkish poet and writer, who was described as a “romantic revolutionary”. Because of his political beliefs, he was sent to prison for ten years during Ataturk’s regime. During his incarceration, Hikmet wrote the following poem, which I dedicate to Omar Khadr who has suffered ten years in Guantanamo Bay.

Since I Was Thrown Inside
Since I was thrown inside,
the earth has orbited the sun ten times.
If you ask it:
“Not even worth mentioning,
a microscopic time.”
If you ask me:
“Ten years of my life.”

I had a pencil
the year I was thrown inside.
I used it all up in a week.
If you ask it:
“A whole life.”
If you ask me:
“Come on now, just one week.”

Since I was thrown inside,
Osman, doing time for murder,
finished his seven and a half years and left,
drifted around for a while,
was thrown back inside for smuggling,
did six months and was rereleased,
his letter came yesterday, he’s married,
his child will be born in the spring.

They’re ten years old now,
the children who were conceived
the year I was thrown inside.
And that year’s trembling, long-legged colts
have long turned into confident, wide-rumped mares.
But the olive seeds are still olive seeds,
they’re still children.

New squares have cropped up in my faraway city
since I was thrown inside.
And my loved ones
are living on a street I don’t know
in a house I’ve never seen.

Bread was white and fluffy as cotton
the year I was thrown inside.
Then it was rationed
and here, inside, the people beat each other
for a pitch-black, fist-size piece.
Now it flows freely again,
but dark and tasteless.

The year I was thrown inside,
the second war hadn’t started yet,
the ovens at Dachau weren’t lit,
the atom bomb hadn’t dropped on Hiroshima.

Time flowed like the blood of a child whose throat’s been slit.
Then that chapter officially ended,
and now the U.S. dollar speaks of a third.

Yet, in spite of everything, the days have shone
since I was thrown inside,
and from the edges of darkness,
the people, pressing their heavy hands to the pavement,
have begun to rise.

Since I was thrown inside
the earth has orbited the sun ten times
and just as passionately I repeat
what I wrote
the year I was thrown inside:
“The people, who are plentiful as ants on the ground
as fish in the sea
as birds in the sky,
who are cowardly, courageous,
ignorant, supreme
and childlike,
it is they who crush
and create,
it is but their exploits sung in songs."
And as for the rest,
my ten-year incarceration, for instance,
it’s all meaningless words."

Translated from the Turkish by Deniz Perin
 

Please write to Canadian Public Safety minister Victor Toews, to ask him to repatriate Omar Khadr as soon as possible. You may contact him by email, fax, telephone or postmail:
 
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Hill Office:
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Telephone: 613-992-3128
Fax: 613-995-1049
 
 
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Steinbach, Manitoba
R5G 1Y7
Telephone: 204-326-9889
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