TORONTO, July 15: A 16-year-old boy captured in Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo Bay sobs during his questioning, holding up his wounded arms and begging for help in a video released on Tuesday that provided the first glimpse of interrogations at the notorious US military prison.

“Help me,” he cries repeatedly in despair.

The 10 minutes of video — selected by Omar Khadr’s Canadian lawyers from more than seven hours of footage recorded by a camera hidden in a vent — shows Khadr weeping, his face buried in his hands, as he is questioned by Canadian intelligence agents over four days in 2003.

The video, made by US government agents at the prison in Cuba and originally marked as secret, provides insight into the effects of prolonged interrogation and detention on the Guantanamo prisoner.

A Canadian Security Intelligence Services agent in the video grills Khadr about events leading up to his capture as an enemy combatant when he was 15. Khadr, a Canadian citizen, is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier during a 2002 fire fight in Afghanistan. He was arrested after he was found in the rubble of a bombed-out compound — badly wounded and near death.

At one point in the interrogation, Khadr pulls off his orange prisoner shirt and shows the wounds he sustained in the fire fight. He complains he cannot move his arms and says he had not received proper medical attention, despite requests.

“They look like they’re healing well to me,” the agent says of the injuries. “No, I’m not. You’re not here (at Guantanamo),” says Khadr, the son of an alleged Al Qaeda financier.

The agent later accuses Khadr of using his injuries and emotional state to avoid the interrogation. “No, you don’t care about me,” Khadr says. Khadr also tells his interrogator that he was tortured while at the US military detention centre at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where he was first detained after his arrest in 2002.

Later on in the tape, a distraught Khadr is seen rocking, his face in his hands.

On the final day, the agent tells Khadr that he was “very disappointed” in how Khadr had behaved, and tries to impress upon him that he should cooperate.

Khadr says he wants to go back to Canada.

“There’s not anything I can do about that,” the agent says.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Commodore J. D. Gordon, denied that Khadr was mistreated while in US custody. “Our policy is to treat detainees humanely and Khadr has been treated humanely,” Gordon said.The video is believed to be the first footage shown of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in action during its 24-year history, offering an unprecedented glimpse into its interrogation strategies. The video was made by US authorities and turned over to Khadr’s defence team, Gordon said. The tapes are US property.

The Supreme Court of Canada in May ordered the Canadian government to hand over key evidence against Khadr to his legal team to allow a full defence of the charges against him, which include accusations by the US that he spied for and provided material support to terrorists.

In June, a Canadian Federal Court judge ordered the Canadian government to release the video to the defence team after the court ruled the US military’s treatment of Khadr broke human rights laws, including the Geneva Conventions.—AP