Sunday, June 3, 2012

Something You Should Know About Marina Nemat: She Identifies With Omar Khadr and Thinks He Got a Raw Deal

Marina Nemat has built a career--two memoirs and now a play--out of her ordeal as an imprisoned teenager in Khomeini's Iran. As such, you would think she of all people would know the difference between what happened to her, and what happened to Omar Khadr. In an essay in Omar Khadr, Oh Canada, though, she reveals that she hasn't a clue about how they differ:
The government of Iran imprisoned me because it believed I was a danger to Iran's national security. I was sixteen, but this didn't make any difference to Iranian officials. 
As I write these lines, a young Canadian, Omar Khadr, languishes in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. His trial, which unfortunately was not a real trial but a military tribunal, began after more than eight years of his imprisonment. He was shot and captured in Afghanistan at the age of fifteen. For three months he was held at the US prison in Bagram. Sedated and shackled, he was taken to his first interrogation hours after being discharged from a military hospital. International law tells us that because he was a child soldier, should not be prosecuted but that every effort should be made to rehabilitate him. Omar needed compassion, not intimidation and punishment...
Sez you, Ms. Nemat. Ez sez: they tried to make him go to rehab, he said no, no, no:
We learn that Khadr rejected the guidance of a moderate Muslim chaplain sent by the U.S. to show him a nonviolent approach to Islam. We learn that, in fact, Khadr leads the other prisoners in prayer, so devout and fundamentalist is he.

We learn that he resents having been imprisoned; that he refuses to acknowledge that his own father’s terrorist work was immoral.

We learn that he signed a written confession — approved by his own lawyers — that he wanted to kill Americans and Jews for the jihad. And to collect a cash bounty.

None of this is disputed by Khadr’s own lawyers. None of this is secret. It just hasn’t been reported. Because it contradicts the consensus media’s narrative.
Marina's too, apparently.

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