Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured at age 15 by US troops in Afghanistan, goes on trial tomorrow at the US naval base in Guantanamo in the first test for US President Barack Obama’s military commissions.
Khadr, now 23 and the last Westerner at the US base in Cuba, is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier. He also is alleged to have been trained by al-Qaeda and joined a network organized by Osama bin Laden to make bombs.
The case is the first to go to trial under the system of military commissions ordered by Obama for detainees captured by US forces in a global campaign following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
Obama had sought to close the detention center that has been the object of international condemnation, but has faced congressional opposition on transferring the detainees to US soil.
The case of Khadr, who has spent a third of his life in Guantanamo, comes under the general heading of “war crimes” and poses some unique legal and political challenges, legal experts say.
“This case is unusual because, of course, the accused was so young at the time of the events,” says Benjamin Wittes, a legal scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “That raises a lot of anxiety, both domestically and internationally.”
Wittes said that the trial would be a key test of the military commissions that two administrations have been trying to implement over the past nine years.
However, because of Khadr’s age, Wittes said, “I am sure that the administration would have rather the [first case] be a different one.”
Severely wounded in the battle that led to his arrest, Khadr has lost the use of his left eye. He says he was mistreated during interrogations that followed his arrest, during which he made statements.
The military judge presiding over the trial, Patrick Parrish, has not yet said if he considered the challenged statements admissible. Eugene Fidell, professor of military law at Yale University, said other questions would be raised by the Khadr case.
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