Tornado Alley (PROG)

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(COMTEX) B: U.S. prosecutor in Khadr case says teen should be tried
by military tribunal ( Canadian Press )

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Jan 10, 2006 (The Canadian Press via COMTEX) --
The U.S. military lawyer prosecuting Omar Khadr said Tuesday that the
Canadian teenager is no fresh-faced innocent but a terrorist murderer who
deserves to be convicted by a special military tribunal.

Chief prosecutor Col. Moe Davis blasted "nauseating" sympathetic portrayals
of Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured after a July 2002 firefight in
Afghanistan that killed a U.S. medic. Authorities could have sought the death
penalty but didn't because Khadr was a juvenile, Davis said in comments the
day before the teen's first appearance at a pre-trial hearing.

"You'll see evidence when we get into the courtroom of the smiling face of
Omar Khadr as he builds bombs to kill Americans," he said.

"I don't think it's a great leap to figure out why we're holding him
accountable," added Davis, charging that Khadr and others picked up the tools
of terrorism at al-Qaida training camps.

"They weren't making s'mores and learning how to tie knots."

Khadr, now 19, is expected to enter a plea in a pre-trial hearing Wednesday
that's going ahead despite attempts by his defence lawyers to stop it and a
pending decision by the Supreme Court on whether the military tribunals are
constitutional.

A member of the Toronto family with alleged ties to Osama bin Laden, Khadr
is charged with murder and other counts arising from the death of the medic
and has been held here at the U.S. military detention centre in Guantanamo
Bay.

One of his U.S. lawyers, Muneer Ahmad, called it "astounding, shameful and
appalling" that Americans are prosecuting the first-ever war crimes case of a
juvenile, saying he has "reliable evidence" that Khadr has been tortured over
his last 39 months in Guantanamo.

And he called on Canada to denounce the tribunal system set up by President
George W. Bush, saying it allows confessions extracted by torture and doesn't
afford anywhere near the kind of due process of criminal civil trials.

"Canada has a decision to make," said Ahmad, "either to publicly condemn the
military commissions as fundamentally unfair . . . or to remain silent on the
matter and complicit in the sham trial."

Davis vigorously defended the system for terrorism suspects captured in the
Afghanistan war, saying "we've got nothing to be ashamed of."

"We want the world to see that we're extending a full, fair and open trial
to the terrorists that have attacked us. We're extending rights to them that
they've never contemplated."

The Khadr family has provoked intense debate in Canada. Each of the five
Khadr siblings, all of whom are Canadian citizens, has at one time or another
been separately accused or investigated for alleged links to terrorism.

Their father, Egyptian-born Canadian Ahmed Said Khadr, was an accused
al-Qaida financier killed in a battle with Pakistani forces in 2003.

Davis argued that the new threat posed by al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists
has necessitated changes in military law, just as there were revisions for
the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after the Second World War.

"Some say we're making up the rules as we go along but the law has to adapt
to today's environment," said Davis.

"We're here to prosecute unlawful conduct, not persecute religious beliefs."

It's particularly galling, said Davis, that human rights organizations are
calling some 500 detainees the "patriots of Guantanamo" who are standing up
for their rights, yet they delay their military tribunals by every means
possible.

"I hate to quote Bart Simpson as an authority but damned if you do, damned
if you don't. That's the situation that we face."

Only nine of the detainees have actually been formally charged with war
crimes and three of the tribunals have been stayed pending the Supreme Court
decision, expected by June.

There are a couple dozen other cases in the works, said Davis, with charges
expected in the coming months.

Khadr will be formally represented by Capt. John Merriam, a U.S. army judge
advocate with no trial experience, "even on charges of jaywalking," said
Ahmad, who is asking that he should be replaced by someone with more
experience.

"It would be laughable if the stakes weren't so high," he said.

U.S. authorities say Khadr threw a grenade that killed U.S. medic
Christopher Speer in an alleged al-Qaida compound. He was shot three times by
American soldiers and is near-blind in one eye.

"Thanks to the American medics who stepped over their dead friend and tended
to Mr. Khadr, he's alive today," said Davis, who rejected allegations of
widespread torture as standard tactics used on captured terrorists.

"Some of them describe (conditions) as being much better than what they ever
had before."

Khadr's lawyers say he's been constantly interrogated, shackled in stress
positions for several hours until he's soiled himself and subjected to
extreme temperatures.

Khadr was formally charged last November.

In what Ahmad has called a "crass political move," word of the charges came
the same day the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear a constitutional
challenge to the military tribunals faced by Khadr and eight others so far.

"The timing has not been at its best," admitted Davis. "In that particular
case, it was already in the works."

Preliminary hearings took place for four of the men in 2004, including Salim
Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden whose case sparked the high
court challenge.

Khadr is expected to attend the hearing in his first public appearance since
he was captured and then sent to Guantanamo in October 2002 just after he
turned 16.

Ali Hamza al-Bahlul is also facing pre-trial hearings on a conspiracy
charge. U.S. authorities allege he provided protection to bin Laden and was a
propagandist for al-Qaida.

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