Note: At NBC News we have something called the hot file where we file update news stories throughout the day that the entire news division has access to. I easily get 100-200 hot notes a day.  Here’s what I filed at the end of Omar Khadr’s hearing today:

Judge Pat Parish denied the defense’s motion to suppress the Omar Khadr “bombmaking ” video found at the sight of the 2002 firefight where Khadr was wounded.  Parish also denied the motion to suppress Khadr’s confessions made to various interrogators since he was apprehended in 2002.

This means, what some consider, a particularly damning video of Omar Khadr being instructed on how to make and plant IED’s by known members of Al Qaeda will be put into evidence. This is the video that CBS aired parts of in 2007.  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3518748n&tag=related;photovideo 

(Note:  We have put in a request for the DOD to release this video to the media.)

This also means that the judge will allow any statements or confessions Khadr made while in custody in Bagram or Guantanamo.

The military commissions case of United States of America v. Omar Ahmed Khadr will begin Tuesday morning at 9amET

In between the hearings and waiting to see if Khadr would show up to court or not, being at GTMO has weirdly been like being at camp.  I mean it’s a camp where you are escorted almost everywhere you go by members of the military and driven on white school busses to the McDonalds, but still, camp.  There are flashlights and tents and mosquitoes and men in uniform.

However, GTMO lost it’s decidedly camp-feel when we went up the hill to Camp X-Ray.

The day started off beautifully.  Our group took a short ride to the beach to swim in the buoyant and warm Caribbean and take my first long snorkeling swim from one beach to another.  Warm water. Warm sand. Red Stripe. Razor Wire. And people who, while I didn’t know them a week ago, I’m really enjoying being around.

We had a ride up to the infamous Camp X-Ray scheduled for 5pm.  We all piled back into our white bus and rumbled up and down GTMO’s hills.  We went by the NEX (Navy Exchange aka taxless Wal-Mart), the McDonalds and the football field until we got to the now overgrown and abandoned Camp X-Ray.

Due to its state of disrepair as well as its government designation as evidence, we weren’t allowed to go into the camp.  Behind wired fences and signs proclaiming “HALT RESTRICTED AREA” we could see the remnants of X-Ray in the distance.  The blue tin roofs still standing between wooden guard towers. 

According to the government Camp X-Ray was closed in April of 2002, but there are reports of it being used in some fashion until 2003. 

What’s striking, even from my far away vantage point, is how out in the open the camp would’ve been.   I have of course read about it, but being there in person makes all of those news reports more clear.  I couldn’t help but think to myself “this is how we keep pigs in farms.” 

Chicken wire and exposure to the elements.

Even taking away the overt mistreatment that’s been documented by various media organizations, I shot video of the still standing chain link in the distance and just felt sad.  Sadness that we would keep human beings, some of whom I know are dangerous, in such conditions.  I was reminded of Howard Dean’s line from the 2004 election: “We can do better.”

Earlier in the week, we had taken tours of the camps that detainees are currently kept in that are much more humane and look basically like prisons you find in America.  Even with our gawking at prisoners through the fences of Camp 4, the prisoners could come into the yard and go back into their rooms as they wished.  If they didn’t want to be exploited by our cameras, they could go behind a wall and have something that resembled privacy. 

Prison’s not perfect but it was better than what I saw at X-Ray.   The newer facilities are an example of doing better. 

So why is it even still standing?  Why not tear it down?  The military is not allowed to raze the camp because it’s evidence.  As late as November 2009, FBI agents were photographing the camp as part of a federal preservation order.  Multiple courts have said that it can’t be torn down.  It’s considered a crime scene. 

Newest Entry: The Tale of the Tape

FBI Agent Robert Fuller,  the first witness in Omar Khadr’s hearing who began his testimony on Wednesday, finally concluded it on Friday.  Fuller is one of the FBI agents who interrogated Khadr in Bagram before he was brought to Guantanamo Bay in October of 2002. 

During his testimony the prosecution played the video of Omar Khadr allegedly making a bomb and conspiring with other men to plant IEDs along a route where American military convoys traveled.  After the video, the FBI agent was asked about Khadr’s reaction back in 2002 when shown the video during interrogations.  He said when questioned about the contents of the video, Khadr identified himself as well as other men in the vide  and  remarked that the tape made him “proud to be a soldier.” 

Parts of the controversial video were leaked and shown by CBS News’ 60 Minutes in 2007 but this was the first time that some of the journalists covering Khadr’s hearing at GTMO had seen the whole video.  Other journalists who were here in January of 2009 had seen the video in its entirety before as well as testimony from Fuller.

The approximately 25-minute video is striking for how little Khadr is seen in it.  There are about three shots of him sprinkled throughout the tape.  One shot of Khadr has him handling materials that could be parts of an IED.  Another shot is the semi-famous nightvision shot where you see him smiling into the camera before it cuts to a  man appearing to bury an IED and the third one is a daytime shot where he is fanning himself and talking about how hot it is in Afghanistan, according to the subtitles.

Other parts of the video are older men working with possible IED materials, men relaxing in a home and shots of rain falling outside.  The video has multiple edits and it’s hard to determine chronology from it. It’s amateurish in that the shooter is clearly playing with the settings, going from color to sepia-toned to pixalating the image.  The idea of playing with the camera would be almost humorous if it didn’t appear as though they were burying IED’s with the intention to blow up US troop convoys.  

This video is really at the center of many of the charges against Omar Khadr. While it doesn’t prove the charge of murder it speaks directly to the charges of conspiracy, spying and material support for terrorism.  However, when shown in its entirety it also speaks to Khadr’s youth.  He is the only teenager in the video.  He’s laughing and smiling and looks like a kid.  

Admittedly, the best outcome for the defense is to have the video ruled inadmissible because of the situation surrounding how it was found. But unlike when just parts of the video are aired, the whole video feels like a gray-area instead of the black and white of terrorist or not terrorist.  

SMALL GLIMPSE INSIDE GUANTANAMO BAY

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/04/29/2289691.aspx

Posted: Thursday, April 29, 2010 2:09 PM
Filed Under: On Assignment

Shawna Thomas is an NBC News producer on assignment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to cover a pre-trial military commission hearing for Omar Khadr.

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA – At the end of Recreation Road in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are at least three detention facilities known as Camps 4, 5 and 6. The media is prohibited from visiting Camp 7, a maximum-security facility, and Camps 1, 2 and 3 are not in use.

Earlier this week, we were given a tour of Camp 4, where Omar Khadr is being held. We also got a tour of Camp 6.

Camp placement depends on the detainees’ level of compliance. Detainees are neither bad nor good, but compliant and non-compliant. Camp 4 is for the most compliant detainees.

But no matter how compliant detainees are, the prevailing image is of the leg restraints, which are found in all of the empty classrooms and communal locations. A guard explained that the leg restraints are for the protection of the guards.

Games of backgammon, checkers and the coveted Nintendo DS units are some of the comfort items offered to the detainees, along with copies of USA Today and Arabic-language newspapers. 

The games and newspapers were laid out in the classroom for the media to see and shoot, but all of the cameras kept drifting to the ground where the restraints lay waiting to be used inside classrooms surrounded by razor wire.

But of course, the shot everybody wants is of the detainees. We inched our cameras as close as possible to a chain link fence that allowed us to view detainee comings and goings in the yard of Camp 4.

We recorded men in white robes walking by, talking to each other and at times staring at our cameras. But, every time someone turned around and looked directly at us – it became another shot that was going to have to be removed from our tapes and media cards at the end of the day. 

The media are restricted from photographing faces or distinguishing features of detainees because it could be a violation of the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

In addition to requiring that prisoners of war “must at all times be treated humanely,” Article 13 states prisoners must be protected against acts of violence and intimidation, but also “against insults and public curiosity.”