Author Michelle Shepard
Nothing could have prepared journalist Michelle Shepard for the reality of Guantánamo Bay. “I knew the politics behind Guantánamo, but the actual physical compound? I had in mind this hyper-militarized base, which it is,” she says. “But you forget there’s this whole navy base there as well, with thousands of soldiers. There’s a Starbucks, there’s a KFC, there’s a souvenir shop and it’s like a real suburban U.S. town. It’s really hard to comprehend.”
In her new book, Guantánamo’s Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr (Wiley & Sons, 270 pp.), Shepard grapples with absurdities. She writes that Guantánamo Bay is a paradox, a “Caribbean Pleasantville” where tactics such as sexual humiliation and stress positions were reportedly used during prisoner interrogations, and where striking a native iguana is a crime, punishable by a $10,000 fine and possible jail sentence.
This has been 21-year-old Omar Khadr’s home for the past six years. The Canadian citizen was detained by U.S. forces in July 2002, after he allegedly killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer during a firefight at a suspected al-Qaida compound. He was then 15 years old.
Soon after, Khadr was sent to Guantánamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray, the detention facility that would be brought to international attention after some ill-advised official photographs were released by the Pentagon. “It was one of the many PR missteps at Guantánamo,” says Shepard.
The Toronto Star journalist first travelled to Guantánamo in 2006 and has gone back numerous times since. She continues to vigilantly monitor Khadr’s case. “I’ve actually watched him, over the last two years, really grow up. When I first started coming, he still looked like a teenager. When I saw him last week, he was a 21-year-old man.” Oddly enough, she has yet to meet him. “The weird thing about this is I’ve actually never interviewed him. I’ve written a book about someone I’ve never met.”
Among other restrictions imposed upon them, visiting journalists are prohibited from talking to detainees at Guantánamo Bay. In reconstructing Khadr’s life, Shepard relies upon the testimonies of those closest to him, including members of the now-infamous Khadr family, dubbed “Canada’s First Family of Terrorism” following a CBC interview in which Khadr’s brother links the family to al-Qaida and his mother attacks Canadian culture.
“I think it’s pretty safe to say that many Canadians loathe the Khadr family,” says Shepard. “Many people think they’re Canadians of convenience. You can’t gloss over anything they’ve said, but the public has to be able to separate Khadr from his family.”
Though she doesn’t dwell on the family’s controversial behaviour in Guantánamo’s Child, it’s impossible to deny the impact they’ve had on Khadr’s case. Shepard reasons that Canadians’ dislike of the Khadr family may be one of the reasons that the Canadian government has never intervened in the case, despite the fact that Khadr is the sole remaining western detainee at Guantánamo. Countries worldwide have condemned the off-shore prison and demanded the extradition of their citizens, but Khadr remains in U.S. custody. In his six years at Guantánamo, he has spent much time in isolation. He claims to have been abused, and his lawyers have often worried about his mental state.
His age, the seriousness of the accusations against him, and his lengthy internment have made his one of the most high-profile international legal cases in recent years, and many questions have been raised in regards to the legality of his detainment. Civil rights activists argue that Guantánamo Bay is an affront to justice, that it disregards habeas corpus, which essentially requires governments to justify detentions before courts on the basis of evidence. As well, protesters are quick to point out that children involved in armed conflict are protected under international law, which states that “child soldiers” are coerced into participation and should therefore be rehabilitated, not punished. “For me,” Shepard writes, “his age has always been the greatest factor. He was indoctrinated into his father’s war.”
It’s a rare personal admission. Throughout Guantánamo’s Child, Shepard avoids editorializing. “I’m not an advocate,” she says. “I came at it as a journalist. I just wanted us to have an informed debate about the case.”
The result is a thorough and accessible history of not only Khadr’s unusual upbringing (“He had one foot in both worlds. He grew up memorizing the Qur’an and Green Eggs and Ham. He was a product of both the West and the East, and then exposed to unbelievable people”), but of the “War on Terror” and America's post-9/11 foreign policy. Shepard succeeds in providing the context needed to make sense of the complexities of Khadr’s case. In navigating readers through what she labels the “murky” world of national security and terrorism, she casts light on the salient issues and begs the question: why not Canada?
“[Khadr’s case] has put Canada in this really unique position because, traditionally, Canada has been a leader in civil and human rights. We have such a good international reputation.” With Khadr set to make history as the youngest suspect ever to be tried for war crimes, this reputation may be history as well.
