Lawyer: 'Shocking' that Khadr will face military commission in U.S.

By GottaLaff

Omar Khadr as a 15 year old, and now after years in Guantanamo. (h/t: Tymlee)

Yesterday I posted my opinion of military tribunals (aka commissions). I hate to repeat myself, so please click on the link to read what I could easily copy and paste here to make the same points about this story.

I've also posted previously about Omar Khadr, the youngest Gitmo prisoner, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15.

Now the two stories merge in a way that I was hoping they wouldn't:

Omar Khadr's civilian lawyer in the United States said Friday he was disappointed to hear Washington is pressing ahead with military commission proceedings against the Canadian terror suspect.

Barry Coburn said he finds the decision "shocking."

"We thought that the incoming Obama administration signalled a new day with respect to these cases - a new respect for civil liberties, an abhorrence of torture, a respect for the time-honoured legal procedures and protections that are mandated by the constitution and enforced by the federal courts, " Coburn told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview.

So did we.

Ottawa is fighting a Federal Appeal Court decision which upheld a ruling that required the government to try to repatriate the 23-year-old Khadr, who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15.[...]

In August, the appeal court agreed with a federal court judge's decision that Khadr's rights were breached when Canadian officials interviewed him in Guantanamo in 2003 and shared the resulting information with U.S. authorities.

His youth was taken from him, and apparently, so was justice:

He has spent seven years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps charged with war crimes and providing support to terrorism after allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier.^[2]

In February 2008, the Pentagon accidentally released documents that revealed that although Khadr was present in the house, there was no other evidence that he had thrown the grenade.

In fact, military officials had originally reported that another of the surviving militants had thrown the grenade just before being killed, and later rewrote their report to implicate Khadr instead.^[3]

Defence lawyers have also suggested that the soldier may have been killed by friendly fire by his own comrades.^[4] It was later determined that Khadr had been crippled, blinded and trapped beneath rubble at the time, and American soldiers weren't even aware of his presence until one stepped on his prone body.^[5]

"Shocking" indeed.

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All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.