Teenage guantanamo prisoner to face trial

Guantanamo detainee set to be tried

Khadr wrote to his lawyer saying he hoped the trial would highlight the 'unfair' process [Al Jazeera] Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured as a teenager by US troops in Afghanistan, is set to go on trial at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The hearing this week will be the first of a Guantanamo detainee before a military tribunal under Barack Obama, the US president. US forces captured Khadr in Afghanistan in July 2002, when he was just 15 years old. "Omar Khadr could potentially be the first child soldier to be prosecuted for war crimes in modern history," Al Jazeera's Monica Villamizar said, reporting from Guantanamo Bay. "Under international law, children captured in war should be treated as victims and not perpetrators," she said. Khadr is accused of killing a US soldier after throwing a grenade at the end of a four-hour US bombardment of an al-Qaeda compound in the eastern Afghan city of Khost. The Canadian citizen, who is now 23, has refused a plea deal. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of charges that include conspiring to commit terrorism and murder. Allegations of abuse His lawyers deny that he threw the grenade and contend that the prosecution is relying on confessions extracted following abuse. Patrick Parrish, the military judge presiding over the case at the US base, has not made a decision on the admissibility of the challenged statements. IN DEPTH US jail to hold Guantanamo inmates Yemen weighs rehabilitation issue Life after Guantanamo Guantanamo conditions 'deteriorate' Inside Guantanamo Bay Khadr's case is the first to go to trial under the system of military commissions for detainees captured by US forces in a global campaign following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Obama had sought to close the detention centre that has been the object of international condemnation, but he has faced congressional opposition on transferring the detainees to US soil. The US president has introduced some changes designed to extend more legal protections to detainees, but the tribunals' long-term future remains uncertain. But Navy Captain David Iglesias, a lawyer and spokesman for the military commission's prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay, told Al Jazeera that the tribunals have improved and that Khadr can get a fair trial. "It is a case that has been pending for many, many years. The government is ready to go forward. To what extent it has international repercussions is beyond anybody's guess," he said. "The Military Commissions Act has been revised. It is a much better law than what it was under the 2006 Act. I believe based on my experience it is a fair system." Our correspondent said that Khadr's attitude has changed drastically since his first court appearance in 2006. "He was very co-operative with the military system [but now it is completely different," she said. "Khadr's lawyer told me recently that he is trying to convince [Khader] to be co-operative: to show up in trial and not [to] fire his only military defence lawyer who was assigned to him. Khadr has expressed in the past that he want[s] to be convicted, [to] show the world how unfair this system is ... and to show that the US will eventually convict child soldiers." Sudanese detainee In a letter to his Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney, published in newspapers in Canada and the US, Khadr said the trial may show the world how unfair the process is. Obama is facing legal and political obstacles in trying to shut down the detention centre "The world doesn't get it, so it might work if the world sees the US sentencing a child to life in prison, it might show the world how unfair and sham this process is," he said. "And if the world doesn't see all this, to what world am I being released to? A world of hate ... and discrimination." Separately this week, the Pentagon is also preparing to hold a military commission for the sentencing of Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, a Sudanese detainee at Guantanamo. Al-Qosi is accused of acting as accountant and aide to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the 1990s when the network was centred in Sudan and Afghanistan. He is also accused of later working as bin Laden's bodyguard. Al-Qosi pleaded guilty last month to one count each of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorism as part of a deal with prosecutors. The 50-year-old had faced a potential life sentence if convicted at trial. Terms of the plea deal, including any limits on his sentence, have not been disclosed. Since 2001, four men have been convicted of terrorism-related charges in Guantanamo military trials, two of whom pleaded guilty, while US federal courts have sentenced some 200 other suspects over the same period.

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