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29 March 2024

Ex-child soldier Khadr 'highly dangerous,'

Published
By AFP

Canadian former child soldier Omar Khadr is a "highly dangerous" militant, a US military tribunal heard Tuesday as it sought a sentence in his war crimes trial.

The 24-year-old, who is being tried at Guantanamo Bay, pleaded guilty Monday to war crimes against US forces in a plea deal that will see him avoid a life sentence and possibly return to Canada.

Seven members of the military panel were to determine the sentence to be imposed against Khadr, in a hearing that could last up to four days.
Khadr, the last Western detainee at Guantanamo, was arrested by US forces in Afghanistan at age 15.

After years of declaring his innocence, he finally admitted to killing a US soldier with a grenade in 2002 during a firefight in Afghanistan, conspiring with Al-Qaeda and building roadside bombs.

Among the evidence heard on Tuesday, jurors watched a video of a US Humvee military vehicle being exploded by a homemade roadside bomb, an improvised explosive device (IED) of the sort Khadr is said to have built and deployed against American troops.

"The Humvee didn't fare too well," said an FBI explosives weapons expert who took the stand.
A somberly dressed Khadr listened, stone-faced, as witnesses went through a long list of allegations, including his father's close ties with Al-Qaeda supreme Osama bin Laden, or the militant training he received voluntarily to kill US troops and attack Jews.

An FBI interrogator testified that when confronted with having killed a US soldier, Khadr was not remorseful but "was happy with it."

At the other side of the room, the wife of that soldier - sergeant first class Christopher Speer - sobbed loudly.

"He is highly dangerous," forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner told the jury after spending just two days evaluating the tall, bearded prisoner in June and watching videos of his family found online.

"He believes that he shouldn't be here for a day, a minute... He is deeply resentful of it and bitter."

Welner described Kadr as a slick, English-speaking "rock star" of Guantanamo who has grown more devout during his lengthy stay at the prison camp, chosen by his fellow inmates to lead prayers.

The US government says Khadr was the lone survivor of a US bombardment of a compound in eastern Afghanistan, and rose from the rubble to throw a grenade that killed Speer, before being shot twice in the back by US troops.

Details of Khadr's plea deal have not yet been disclosed, but press reports and rights groups say he will serve another year at Guantanamo before returning to his native Canada to serve out a seven-year term.

The sentence reportedly does not include the eight years Khadr has already spent behind bars at the controversial US naval base where 174 "war on terror" detainees remain.

Experts and human rights activists said the deal would spare the US government the potential embarrassment of a full trial.

"The government gets the big propaganda victory because they're able to say now that this guy admitted that he did all these horrible things," said law professor David Glazier of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

"They're able to say that they convicted this terrorist."

Yale University law professor Eugene Fidell said Khadr "would probably have promised them anything simply to get out" after years spent behind bars.

Glazier noted that Khadr had to admit he killed two Afghan soldiers, even though the US government had no evidence of those killings and had no plans to discuss them at the trial.

"The practical reality of Guantanamo seems to be that the only sure way that a detainee can get released is to plead guilty of something with an assurance that they finish their sentence in their own country," he added.

Human rights activists also argued that the Obama administration had got what it wanted out of the case.

"Khadr's plea deal means that the United States will be spared the embarrassment of trying a child soldier in a tribunal that most of the world sees as illegitimate," the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.

The United States will also avoid "possibly embarrassing details of torture against Khadr, or be subject to endless rounds of appeals that would challenge the constitutionality of the charges," added Human Rights First.