Former interrogator felt ‘compassion’ for Khadr

U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO, Cuba – A former army interrogator, known as The Monster, testified Wednesday that he felt "compassion" for Omar Khadr after U.S. forces plucked the Canadian-born terror suspect from an Afghan battlefield.

"He was a 15-year-old child who’d been blown up, shot, grenaded," said Damien Corsetti, who assisted at Khadr’s bedside screening in the hospital wing of the U.S. detention centre in Bagram, Afghanistan.

"He was probably in one of the worst places on Earth. He was in the wrong place for a 15-year-old child to be."

Khadr, now 23, faces murder among five war crimes charges for allegedly tossing a hand grenade that killed a U.S. soldier during the July 27 2002, firefight that led to his capture.

His defence lawyers say he faced coercion and torture during an undetermined number of interrogations he underwent in Bagram and at the detention camps of the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and any self-incriminating statements he made should be thrown out.

Corsetti, who spoke frequently about abuses he saw at Bagram, testified he was unaware of any maltreatment of Khadr, with whom he developed a "friendly" rapport following their initial encounter.

But he also said that he never encouraged the detainees he spoke with to offer their complaints about other interrogators.

"I was pretty busy when I was there," he said. "As much as I liked Mr. Khadr . . . I would have told (him) or other prisoners bringing up issues with me that they needed to talk to their interrogators about it."

Corsetti, who was called as a witness by Khadr’s lawyers, faced a court-martial in 2006 on charges relating to detainee abuse at Bagram, but was acquitted.

He appears in the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, which is critical of the "war on terrorism" during the administration of former president George W. Bush.

"The president of the United States doesn’t know what the rules are. The secretary of defence doesn’t know what the rules are. But the government expects this (private first class) to know what the rules are?" he says in the film.

Corsetti, who testified via video link from Arlington, Va., told the court he is now a "disabled veteran" diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in Afghanistan and Iraq.