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TechnoratiGuantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba - A Canadian accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan should not be tried as a war criminal because he was a child soldier for al Qaeda, too young to voluntarily join its forces, his military defense lawyer told a U.S. war court on Monday.
Navy Lt. William Kuebler asked a military judge to throw out the charges against Canadian defendant Omar Khadr, who was shot and captured at age 15 in a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
"He is a victim of al Qaeda, not a member of al Qaeda," Kuebler said.
Khadr is the Toronto-born son of an alleged al Qaeda financier. He is accused of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer in the firefight and planting roadside bombs intended to kill other U.S. or coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.
Khadr is charged in the Guantanamo war court with murder, attempted murder, conspiring with al Qaeda, providing material support for terrorism and spying by conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan. He faces life in prison if convicted.
Kuebler argued that U.S. and international law assume that children involved in an armed conflict are not there voluntarily, because they lack the experience and judgment to understand the risk of joining armed forces. Defense attorneys contend that any charges against Khadr should be pursued in a civilian court in a juvenile system where the goal is rehabilitation rather than punishment.
If the U.S. Congress intended to try children as war criminals, it would have explicitly authorized that in the 2006 law that serves as a framework for the Guantanamo court, Kuebler said.
But a U.S. Department of Justice attorney, arguing for the prosecution, said that if Congress intended to exclude juveniles from the Guantanamo war court, it would have explicitly written that, because lawmakers knew Khadr could face charges. Instead, Congress wrote the law using the term "person," which legally refers to "anyone born alive," Justice Department attorney Andy Oldham said.
LAST WESTERNER
Khadr is the last citizen of a Western nation among the 275 captives being held at Guantanamo as part of the Bush administration's war on terrorism.
Charges are now pending against five of the Guantanamo prisoners. The Pentagon plans to try about 80 of them. But six years after the detention camp opened, only one captive has been convicted in Guantanamo's widely criticized tribunal system and that was through a plea deal.
Khadr sat quietly during the hearing, clad in a white tunic and trouser uniform signifying that he complies with camp rules. In his more than five years at Guantanamo, the once pimply faced boy has grown into a 21-year-old man with a short, bushy beard.
The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, did not indicate when he would rule on the request to drop the charges. The case is scheduled for trial in May, though Kuebler said it probably would be delayed.
The court released documents describing the battle in which Khadr was captured. U.S. forces entered the suspected al Qaeda compound after an aerial bombing and were fired upon with a rifle and with the grenade that killed Speer, it said.
An unidentified witness, who is apparently a member of the U.S. armed forces, said he found two wounded people still alive inside -- a man lying near an AK-47 assault rifle, whom he shot in the head and killed, and Khadr, who was seated on the ground facing away.
The witness said he shot Khadr twice in the back and that Khadr replied repeatedly in English, "Kill me."
Khadr was instead given medical treatment and sent to Guantanamo.
Editing by Tom Brown and Alan Elsner
© 2008 Reuters
17 Comments so far
Show AllThanks for the link chameleon2, but don't you think it's enough punishment to be paralized for life? What I read is that the kid was shot in the back twice. How much more admirable is that, then what he did? If he's a criminal than he should stand trial in a court of his peers. Can you find 12 good boys his age? From the same kind of family he came from?
Dominick J: I agree it was a and cruel statement but I stand by it. See link below:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/khadr/family/canada.html
A lot of people are taking advantage of Canada and the good nature of Canadians. We got american deserters (Jeremy Hinzman and others)hiding here, al qa'ida criminals getting medical treatment (Khadr) and God only knows what else. Not sure how other Canadians think but this has to be put and end to.
shakker - I wound not blame celibacy for pedophilia. Remember the teacher who was caught recently for making child porn and posting it on line. Besides these pieces of shit who took advantage of people's trust, I blame Pope Benedict (and others like him) who did his best to cover up these crimes when still a church official.
Dominick J - agree with you on your tax comment. But you need to know that Omar Khadr is being punished for the sins of his family. Omar Khadr's late father was - er - not father of the year by a long shot. Of all the child soldiers the Americans picked up, only Omar Khadr was tortured because the Americans wanted to know what daddy was up to.
Seems everyone wants him back except Stephen Harper.
America has a long history of granting rights and privileges to the young. Child labor, infants making political contributions, Catholic Priests demonstrating the downside of sex and of weird lifestyles that forbid a normal sexual outlet.
These children will really understand the downside of torture. Maybe they can tell that jackass attorney general that water boarding IS TORTURE.
chameleon2 says: No way, there's already one of his family here in Canada that lives on my tax dollars. Please keep him there
For starters that's an awful mean statement to make and I'm sure your dollar isn't giving his family much at all. I also would like to know how do you know His family's tax dollars aren't supporting your right to be cruel?
As Bernice said, he should be allowed to go home!
RE: The witness said he shot Khadr twice in the back and that Khadr replied repeatedly in English, "Kill me."
The witness should have listened to Khadr's request, shoot him in the head as well, thus preventing further problems.
Bernice said: "He should be allowed to go home to Canada".
No way, there's already one of his family here in Canada that lives on my tax dollars. Please keep him there.
canuckchuck I would say killing prisoners IS a war crime, especially if they are kneeling down with their back toward their Killer, the miserable coward! I have a lot of sympathy for our soldiers, any soldier, but no sympathy, at all, for those who don't adhere to the Geneva Convention
Isn't shooting wounded prisoners still a war crime?
"U.S. forces entered the suspected al Qaeda compound after an aerial bombing and were fired upon with a rifle and with the grenade that killed Speer, it said.
An unidentified witness, who is apparently a member of the U.S. armed forces, said he found two wounded people still alive inside - a man lying near an AK-47 assault rifle, whom he shot in the head and killed, and Khadr, who was seated on the ground facing away.
The witness said he shot Khadr twice in the back and that Khadr replied repeatedly in English, "Kill me."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What did they expect from the survivors, a parade?
It's quite obvious the 2nd phase of this attack was to go in on foot and kill any and all survivors. So for Khadr, it was kill or be killed, which would've been the automatic mindset of anyone who just got BOMBARDED in an aerial assault. Fighting for his life this kid gets shot not once, but TWICE in the BACK and ended up surviving, and now they're charging HIM with "murder, attempted murder, conspiring with al Qaeda, providing material support for terrorism and spying by conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan", and is facing life in prison as a war criminal???
Amazing...
Have we not harmed this boy enough? (Along with hundreds of others.)
He should be allowed to go home to Canada, having already served a long and dispiriting imprisonment, probably without ever having committed a crime in anyone's eyes except the inventor of the faux "War on Terror" that justifies The Inventor's need to hunt-down-and-kill.
ACLU To Monitor Military Commission Hearings At Guantánamo Bay This Week
Court To Determine Whether Prosecution Of Two Foreign Nationals Is Proper
WASHINGTON, DC - February 4 - The American Civil Liberties Union will be at Guantánamo Bay this week to monitor the military commission hearings of Canadian national Omar Ahmed Khadr and Yemeni national Salim Ahmed Hamdan. In each hearing, a U.S. military judge will determine whether the commission has proper jurisdictional authority to hear the U.S. government's case. Khadr and Hamdan are two of only four Guantánamo detainees to face charges since Congress' 2006 reinstatement of the commissions after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the system established by the Bush administration.
http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0204-05.htm
"Congress' 2006 reinstatement of the commissions" is described here ..
What Bush did was to push Congress to pass the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which redefined what constituted war crimes under the War Crimes Act and omitted outrages upon personal dignity and humiliating and degrading treatment. It also made immunity from prosecution under the War Crimes Act retroactive to 1997. This means that anyone in his administration who is liable for war crimes, and engaged in torture or in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment during the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, or at Guantánamo, and secret CIA "black sites" would be immune.
What the Military Commissions Act of 2006 also does is to strip away habeas corpus rights from all non-citizens, and that includes people who are lawful permanent residents. If a person was tortured or treated inhumanely, there would be no way to come to court and say that the Geneva Conventions were violated. The other thing the Military Commissions Act does is to define who is an unlawful enemy combatant and to allow Bush to define that. It would include citizens who speak out or write or give money to a charity they may not realize is connected with a group on Bush's list of terrorist organizations. The media talked mostly about habeas corpus-stripping provisions, which are unconstitutional. The Constitution allows Congress to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. Habeas corpus is a very important tool that someone who is being incarcerated or confined can use to go to court and have a judge determine whether he or she is being mistakenly held. What it means to lose habeas corpus is that thousands of prisoners in US custody around the world can be detained for the rest of their lives and will never be able to go to court.
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/4740/1/32/
"Unfortunately, the Hamdan decision left in its wake a void and uncertainty that Congress needed to address – and address quickly – in order to continue fighting the war on terrorism. The Military Commissions Act of 2006, I believe, allows us to do that in a way that protects our soldiers and other personnel fighting on the front lines and respects core American principles of justice. I would like to thank Senators Warner and Graham for their unceasing work on this bill. It is certainly one of the most important pieces of legislation that the Senate will consider this year, and it is imperative that Congress pass it as soon as possible." SENATOR JOHN McCAIN
(And ROMNEY is worse!)
RE: - For reasons he does not go into, he says he shot him in the back twice.
Who let him not go into the reasons?
Snippent below from the CBC today, if it helps. Reuters seems to have omitted some key facts.
One might also wonder what time it was when Khadr was discovered kneeling with his back to the soldiers, and what direction he was facing--and what impact that might have had on the importance of crafting a more sanitized and obfuscated official account of events.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/02/05/khadr-account.html
"
The unidentified soldier says he killed the first al-Qaeda fighter before spotting Khadr, whom he said was wounded, on his knees and facing away from him. For reasons he does not go into, he says he shot him in the back twice.
The Pentagon says American soldiers fired on Khadr in self-defence after he tried to attack them.
Khadr's military lawyer Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler suggests that the U.S. military may have been involved in a coverup.
"The U.S. government had a problem on its hands when it found that it had a 15-year-old Canadian on its hands with two gaping bullet holes in his back that had been facing away from the fight," said Kuebler.
Kuebler hopes the eyewitness account introduces enough reasonable doubt that Judge Peter Brownback will have to dismiss the murder charge against Khadr.
"
Since this legislation does not exclude any age for terrorist responsibility, and since it came out of the USA Congress, I assume that responsibility starts at conception.
Hey, what's the life of one kid compared to cultivating the love-in between Harpo and Bush?
RE: - The witness said he shot Khadr twice in the back and that Khadr replied repeatedly in English, "Kill me."
So who was it who shot a fifteen year old in the back, not once but twice! And why did Khadr ask them to kill him? I am a bit curious about that.
It could be because he feared torture or it could be because he did not like the life he was leading and saw no other way out.
RE: - Instead, Congress wrote the law using the term "person," which legally refers to "anyone born alive," Justice Department attorney Andy Oldham said.
This definition of "person" does seem to rule out the concept of corporate personhood.
Why isn't the unidentified witness, who is apparently a member of the U.S. armed forces, who found two wounded people still alive inside and killed a man lying near an AK-47 assault rifle and shot Khadr twice in the back up for murder charges and for violating the Geneva Conventions?
The same reason the killers of Mai Lai went scott free. And the killers of Wounded Knee, Sand Creek ...
It's ok to murder in an American or Blackwater uniform.
God Forgive America!