Military trial of Omar Khadr condemned by Anmesty

Calcutta News.Net
Thursday 12th August, 2010

The rights group Amnesty International has condemned the US government for allowing the military commission trial of Omar Khadr at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre to go ahead.

The group has said the trial will only prove to be another violation of human rights by the USA in the name of countering terrorism.

Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was taken into US custody as a 15-year-old in 2002 while he was in Afghanistan.

His arrest followed a gun fight with US forces in which he allegedly threw a grenade, killing a US soldier.

Khadr is facing five war crime charges, including a murder charge.

Amnesty said the USA had not listened to repeated appeals from the international community, including senior UN officials, about what it has called the "unfair trial of an individual accused of alleged war crimes committed when he was a child."

It said that under international law, the USA should have taken full account of Omar Khadr’s age at the time of his arrest, and treated him according to principles of juvenile justice, but instead held him for more than two years, subjecting him to repeated interrogations without access to a lawyer or the courts.

On Monday, a military judge ruled that statements made by Omar Khadr during his time in custody could be used in the trial after the defence submitted a motion that the statements should be excluded as the product of torture or other ill-treatment.

Seven US military officers will sit as a jury on the military commission which sees Omar Khadr facing the possibility of a life prison sentence.

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