Home > Guantanamo Bay judge relieved of duties after threatening to suspend proceedings
Guantanamo Bay judge relieved of duties after threatening to suspend proceedings
by Open-Publishing - Saturday 31 May 2008http://www.chycho.com/?q=node/1734
“The military judge in the Omar Khadr trial in Guantanamo Bay has been relieved of his duties, a move that Mr. Khadr’s defence counsel implied is a result of the judge siding with the defence on a number of evidence-disclosure issues in the controversial military tribunal case.”
Omar Khadr is the Canadian child soldier that the United States government has been holding captive in Guantanamo Bay for the last six years.
“Mr. Khadr’s U.S. military defence lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler, said the sudden change of judge comes after a recent commission hearing in which Col. Brownback ‘threatened to suspend proceedings in the case of Omar Khadr if prosecutors continued to withhold key evidence from Omar’s lawyers.’”
This news comes one week after the Supreme Court of Canada issued a judgment stating that Guantanamo Bay was an illegal operation and ordered “the Canadian government to hand over interrogation documents to Omar Khadr’s defence lawyers.” The ruling essentially implies that Canada and the United States are committing war crimes by allowing these ‘show trials’ to continue.
If the Bush administration has its way, Khadr will be the first person put on trial anywhere in the world for “war crimes” allegedly committed when he was a juvenile. Keep in mind that in addition to the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that the Guantanamo Bay trials are illegal, the United States Supreme Court has also ruled that Guantanamo trials violate U.S. and global laws.
The story so far:
Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen, born 19 September 1986 in Ottawa Canada. He “has been detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps since he was captured at the age of 15 following a 2002 firefight between American troops and militants in Afghanistan.”
When the US military entered the village where Khadr was living, he was caught in the firefight, and while on his knees shot twice in the back. At some point before this, US Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer was killed by what may have been friendly fire. The United States lied about its evidence against Khadr, he was charged as an enemy combatant responsible for the death of Sgt. Speer, and sent to Guantanamo Bay where he has spent the last 6 years of his life being tortured.
In the summer of 2007 all charges were dropped against Khadr but he was not released. Then in March 2008 it was revealed that US military command had altered the report on the firefight in Afghanistan to cast blame on Khadr - originally the reported had stated “the assailant who threw the grenade was killed.” Then we learned that the Canadian government was refusing to hand over evidence to the defense, in violation of court orders.
The above explains why Roméo Dallaire, a Canadian Senator, humanitarian, author, retired general, and one of the most respected people in Canada, “told MPs that Mr. Khadr is a victim, a child soldier who should be rehabilitated and re-integrated into society and not tried before what he calls an illegal court.” He believes that “the Khadr case points out a moral equivalence among Canada, the United States and al-Qaeda.”