Khadr To Face U.S. Military Tribunal

Khadr to face U.S. military tribunal
By Paul Koring | Globe and Mail

“We thought that the incoming Obama administration signalled a new day with respect to these cases, a new respect for civil liberties, an abhorrence of torture, a respect for the time-honored legal procedures and protections that are mandated by the Constitution and enforced by the federal courts,” he said.

Instead and despite the president's promises it has failed “to make these fundamental protections available to Omar Khadr, who was fifteen years old when he was detained in Afghanistan as a child soldier and has been locked away in Guantanamo ever since, is, quite frankly, devastating and shocking to me personally.

Canadian Omar Khadr, the last westerner left in Guantanamo Bay, will face trial by military tribunal unlike the high-profile Sept 11, 2001, attacks plotters who will be brought to New York for trial in a civilian courts where they have far greater rights and protections, U.S. officials announced Friday.

Mr. Khadr's lawyer Barry Coburn, accused the administration of resorting to Bush-era injustice....In a separate, Canadian, case, being argued today before the Supreme Court in Ottawa, the Harper government is fighting a lower court ruling ordering it to try and bring Mr. Khadr. Every other western ally has insisted its citizens be returned from the Caribbean gulag at Guantanamo, created originally by the Bush administration to keep terrorist suspects out of the reach and protections of U.S. law. Read more.