Last week was a busy week for legal challenges by former Guantánamo prisoners. Just after David Hicks announced that he was appealing against his 2007 conviction for providing material support for terrorism (which I wrote about here), Omar Khadr’s lawyer in the US announced that the Canadian citizen, who was repatriated in September 2012 but is still imprisoned in his home country, is “set to appeal his five war crimes convictions on the grounds that the military commission had no legal authority to try him or accept his guilty pleas,” as Colin Perkel described it for The Canadian Press.

In order to leave Guantánamo, Khadr accepted a plea deal in October 2010, in which he admitted that he was guilty of murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying, even though there are serious problems with the credibility of the main charge against him — that he threw a grenade that killed a US soldier — as an investigation of the evidence indicates that, at the time, he was unconscious, having been shot twice in the back at close range.

Khadr is able to challenge two of the charges against him — providing material support for terrorism and conspiracy — because of two rulings by the court of appeals in Washington D.C. last October and in January this year, when judges threw out two of the only convictions secured in the military commissions at Guantánamo, in 2008 — against Salim Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden, and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a propagandist for al-Qaeda. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m cross-posting below an excellent article about Omar Khadr, the child prisoner held at Guantánamo for ten years, from 2002 to 2012, written by Heather Marsh, a journalist and activist who ran WikiLeaks Central, the WikiLeaks news site, from 2010 to 2012. Omar, who was just 15 years old when he was seized in Afghanistan after a firefight with US Special Forces in July 2002, was returned to Canada in September 2012 as the result of a plea deal negotiated in Guantánamo, in which, in exchange for admitting killing a US soldier with a grenade (which was almost certainly untrue), Omar received an eight-year sentence in October 2010, with one year to be served in Guantánamo, and seven in Canada.

Heather’s article was initially published on the Free Omar Khadr website that she runs with Aaf Post, between a court hearing that Omar had on September 23, and the ruling on October 18. She also thanked the Free Omar Khadr group for research assistance. As I explained in an article after the ruling, in the initial submission in August, and in the hearing in September, his lawyer, Dennis Edney, sought his transfer from a maximum security prison (where he is currently held) to a provincial prison, arguing that an eight-year sentence ought to have been regarded as a youth sentence (because a life sentence is mandatory for an adult murder conviction), and therefore Khadr should not have been sent to a maximum security prison in the first place.

However, in delivering his ruling, Justice John Rooke refused to allow Khadr to be moved. Although he agreed that eight years was not an adult sentence for murder, he accepted eight years as an appropriate punishment for the other four war crimes that Khadr agreed to in his plea deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, in a court in Edmonton, Justice John Rooke, responding to a habeas corpus petition submitted in September by former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Khadr, issued a ruling ordering him to remain in a maximum security federal prison rather than being moved to a provincial prison, “limiting his chances for parole,” as the Toronto Star described it.

Khadr, who was a juvenile — just 15 years old — when he was seized in July 2002 after a firefight in Afghanistan, where he had been taken by his father, was held at Guantánamo for ten years, and only left the prison after agreeing to a plea deal in October 2010, in which he accepted five charges — spying, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, attempted murder and murder (of a US Special Forces soldier, Sgt. Christopher Speer), even though that last charge was based on an extremely untrustworthy claim that he had thrown the grenade that killed Sgt. Speer. Under the terms of the plea deal, he received an eight-year sentence, with one year to be served in Guantánamo and the remaining seven in Canada.

Eleven months late, in September 2012, Khadr was eventually returned to Canada, where he was imprisoned in the Millhaven Institution, a maximum-security prison near Kingston, Ontario. In May this year, after he received threats from another prisoner, he was moved to another maximum security prison, the Edmonton Institution in Edmonton, Alberta, and in August his lawyer, Dennis Edney, sought his transfer to a provincial prison. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the 27th birthday of Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who has been imprisoned since he was 15 years old — in Guantánamo for ten years, and, since the end of September last year, in Canada.

Khadr’s return to Canada followed a monstrous travesty of justice in the US. Under the terms of a plea deal in October 2010, in his trial by military commission, he admitted to being an “alien unprivileged enemy belligerent,” and to throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier at the time of his capture during a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, even though the evidence suggests that he was face down and unconscious, having been shot in the back, when the grenade was thrown. Disgracefully, he was also obliged to admit that, by partaking in combat with US forces during wartime and in an occupied country, he was a war criminal.

Khadr agreed to the plea deal solely in order to leave Guantánamo, receiving an eight-year sentence (as opposed the 40-year sentence arrived at during his trial), with one year to be served at Guantánamo and the remaining seven in Canada.

Most importantly, Khadr was just a child when he was seized, even though, as a juvenile — those under 18 when their alleged crimes take place — he should have been rehabilitated, according to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which both the US and Canada are signatories, rather than being tortured and otherwise abused in US custody, and abandoned by his own government. Read the rest of this entry »