Khadr, only juvenile at Guantanamo, charged

Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was imprisoned at age 15 in Afghanistan in 2002, has been charged with murder after waiting more than four years in Guantanamo Bay. Although charges were made against Khadr last year, they were dropped after the Supreme Court found the planned tribunals unconstitutional.

Although Khadr has appeared in court a couple of times, no new photos of him have been made available, so the photo of him at age 15 is the only one available. It looks like a school photo.



From Canadian CBC news:

Khadr, who was born in Toronto and lived for years in various southern Ontario communities, was arrested in Afghanistan in July 2002. The U.S. military alleges that he killed an American medic in a grenade attack, which wounded several other American soldiers.

Khadr has been held ever since in Guantanamo. His lawyers and human rights groups say he has been abused in the prison.

The charges against Khadr, the Australian and the Yemeni are not considered formal until they are approved by a U.S. Defence Department legal adviser and an official who oversees the trials.

The process should take two weeks, said Davis. He said the trials will not begin until at least the spring.

The chief prosecutor said it made sense to start with charges against Khadr, who is the only Canadian at Guantanamo, and the other two men.

"Those three have been around for a while, and they were prepared and ready to go," he said.

Khadr and nine other prisoners were previously charged with various offenses, but the charges were dropped in June 2006, when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened.

The court ruled that President George W. Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered the initial military tribunals at Guantanamo. The court also said the tribunal rules violated international and U.S. laws.

U.S. Congress passed a new bill authorizing new military hearings, with new rules, and Bush signed it into law in October 2006. Some of the rules have drawn criticisms from activists because they allow for the use of hearsay and coerced evidence.

The military plans to charge 60 to 80 Guantanamo prisoners under the new system.

Khadr has been accused of training with al-Qaeda.

His father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was reportedly a close associate of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The elder Khadr, who moved his family from Canada to Afghanistan in the 1980s, was killed in a gun battle in Pakistan in 2003.

Along with Khadr, Australian David Hicks was also charged. His legal team accused the US Military of harassing them and attempting to undermine them by announcing the charges the day they had left the prison.

Year in Review

As this blog was dormant for much of the year, here we provide a detention/interrogation year in review:

January

Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen held at Guantanamo Bay who was a minor when he was detained by US forces in Afghanistan, was arraigned by a military tribunal.

General Geoffrey Miller testifies before Congress regarding the use of dogs on detainees in Abu Ghraib.


February

The final soldier charged with involvement of in the deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar was acquitted by US Military Courts.

Human Rights First concludes that 34 prisoners had died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, and that 8-12 were tortured to death.

Federal judge David Trager throws out the suit by a Canadian who was sent to Syria to be tortured. (In 2002, Canadian citizen Maher Arar, born in Syria was passing through a New York airport, detained and subsequently "rendered" to Syria and tortured)

Prisoners riot at Policharki Jail in Afghanistan, demanding retrials.


March

Times exposes alleged abuses by the secret task force "6-26" in Iraq.

Army Sargeant Michael J. Smith is found guilty on 6 of 13 counts of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, for the use of dogs on detainees. He gets 6 months jail time, when the maximum sentence would have been 8 years.


April

AP Photographer Bilal Hussein is imprisoned in Ramadi. The US claims he was apprehended with two other militants, surrounded by bombs making material. Journalist defense groups try in vain to get more information on his case.

New data released by the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project alleges that over 600 military and contractors may have been involved in detainee abuse in Iraq. Only 40 members of the armed services have been sentenced to jailtime, and one civilian.


May

A federal judge dismisses the civil law suit against the American government brought by Khaled El-Masri, a German Lebanese-born man who was abducted by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia in 2003. The rationale: the suit would endanger the US' national security.


June

Limited theatrical release of Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo in the US.


July

Iranian-American filmmaker Cyrus Kar filed suit with the US government over his detention in 2005.


September

America turns Abu Ghraib, empty, over to Iraqi control. Its prisoners were moved to Camp Cropper.

President Bush claims the CIA's secret prisons across the world have been emptied.

A new Army manual for interrogation is published, banning hooding, forced nakedness and other stress positions.

AP goes public with their photographer's detention in Ramadi in April, calling for the US to either charge or release him.


October

President Bush signs the Military Commissions Act into law, according to many legal experts, denying habeas corpus rights to non-US citizens and legal aliens in the US. There is debate as to whether it denies habeas rights to American citizens. The Times calls it "a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy".

Afghanistan's Reconciliation Commission visits Bagram in a bid to get more prisoners released. The number of detainees is thought to be around 500 at the time.

The US (apparently) bombs militants in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, killing 80 people in Pakistan's tribal area. Many were civilians.

HRW questions NATO's move towards reliance on "close air support" and bombing of civilian regions, and suggests they create a mechanism to compensate civilians affected by bombing.


November

ICG releases a report called "Countering Afghanistan’s Insurgency: No Quick Fixes" suggesting that priority be given to rule of law and fixing the judiciary.

The European Commission concludes that many EU countries were aware of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" flights.


December

The US releases 26 detainees from Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Around 475 are believed to remain.

An ex-Navyman and security contractor in Baghdad reveals to the Times he was kept prisoner for 3 months at Camp Cropper after attemping to blow the whistle on suspicious activities by his firm. He claims he received "less legal council than Saddam."

Pakistan announces it detained over 500 Taleban and handed 400 of them over to the Afghan government.

Detained (&disappeared) at age 15 in Afghanistan

The story of Omar Khadr, a kid who was captured "on the battlefield" at age 15 in Afghanistan, has been of great interest to Canadians and child-rights activists.



For the past 4 years, the Canadian of Egyptian descent has been encarcerated in Camp Iguana (the juvenile section of Guantantamo) where Americans claim he received preferential treatment due to his young age. When he arrived there at age 16, however, the US refused to treat him as a minor under international law.

The Toronto Star feature on Khadr bends over backwards to achieve balance, interviewing some of the American soldiers who captured the boy after a firefight in Afghanistan. (His father was an Al-Qaeda fundraiser and Bin Laden confidant who was finally killed in 2003.)

The story is worth reading in its entirety.

Khadr faces arraignment by military tribunal today, January 11, after spending almost a fifth of his young life in custody with no notion of his fate.