Khadr Sentenced To 40 Years By Military Tribunal

[inane]

Breaking out of your ideological boundaries can only be healthy.

[Wetcoaster]

The elected governments of the US and Canada if I recall. Aren't you paying attention?

Certainly better than our unelected judges. Score one for the bad guys I guess!

[Wetcoaster]

English please.

Sounds like a lot of money for lawyers either way. No wonder you're so keen to get involved.

Khader is only a young offenders act away from being a traitor under the law. Certainly less sympathetic.

[JAH]

What do you not understand that requires a translation?

The Young Offenders Act was repealed in 2003. Try to keep up.

There is also the matter of international law. Khadr is a child soldier and therefore a victim of a War Crime.

[Wetcoaster]

The contention is that he was not a child soldier as he was not a soldier under the definition of the GC.

[Sharpshooter]

Spain and the UK have nothing to do with the extradition treaty between the US and Canada. The US was not obligated to extradite Mr. Khadr in this case.

Again, just as the legitimacy of the mission is not granted by Canada, it is also not granted by France. The legitimacy of the mission is granted by the United Nations Security Council's repeated authorization. Symbolic gestures get you nothing (isn't that the definition?).

Of what? Bad marksmanship? It's irrelevant to the issue at hand.

No it is not. You know next to nothing of the laws of war, the constraints or lack thereof of a soldier in kinetic operations, or the legal requirements of our politicians wrt to Canadian citizens accused of crimes abroad.

You make wild claims and when I challenge you to post proof you ignore it or put up some youtube vids. This is hardly the mark of a knowlegeable expert in this area.

wtf are you talking about? Khadr was treated as a treasoness bastard because that's what he is. His colour is not the issue.

[Sharpshooter]

Confession and Coercion

Dan Gardner, Citizen Special

Published: Wednesday, October 27, 2010On Sunday, reporters and other Serious People referred to Omar Khadr as an "accused terrorist." On Monday, when Khadr stood before a military commission in Guantanamo and accepted a plea bargain, he became a "confessed terrorist." This is now the standard nomenclature of Serious People.

Indeed, when Khadr's lawyer later said "it's all a fiction ... in our view Mr. Khadr is innocent," Norman Spector pronounced himself "troubled" in The Globe and Mail. Khadr swore to the truthfulness of the accusations, he wrote. Reporters should now be pressing his lawyer to say whether he "is of the view that Omar Khadr committed perjury? And, if so, did he counsel his client to do so?"

In ordinary circumstances, I would understand Norman Spector's concern. A plea at trial is normally the last word on whether one is or isn't a criminal. If the defendant says "guilty," it doesn't matter that he had his fingers crossed. He's guilty. And the "accused terrorist" becomes the "confessed terrorist."

But do I really have to note that these are not ordinary circumstances?

Omar Khadr, as we all know, was arrested in Afghanistan and later accused of being involved with terrorists, making improvised-explosive devices, and, at the end of a battle, throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. He was 15 years old at the time. He was in Afghanistan courtesy of his father, an al-Qaeda financier, who took Omar as a young boy to Pakistan, and later Afghanistan, to be raised in what can best be described as a death cult.

Being 15, Khadr was a child soldier under the terms of a United Nations convention signed by, among others, the U.S. and Canada. Certain important obligations followed from that. American officials honoured none of them.

As a minor, Khadr was also entitled to certain forms of treatment under other international conventions which the U.S. has signed. Again, American officials refused to honour their obligations.

Instead, Khadr, who had been gravely wounded, was fiercely interrogated by the U.S. military in Afghanistan for more than three months. He was hooded, forced into painful stress positions, threatened with barking dogs and bullied. A guard warned him that another prisoner who didn't co-operate had been gang-raped to death. Sent to Guantanamo, he was again subjected to a constant barrage of interrogations, during which he was shackled in painful positions and told he'd be shipped to Egypt or Syria to be tortured.

The first time he was allowed to speak to a lawyer? November 2004. Two years after he was detained.

The following year, Khadr was finally charged and set to be tried by a military commission created by President George W. Bush. The commission was a flagrant kangaroo court. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court quashed it and Khadr's charges lapsed.

Khadr was charged again when President Barack Obama authorized new commissions whose procedural rules are fairer than before but still deeply flawed. How flawed? Despite the corroboration of key events -- notably the threat of gang-rape -- by the government's own witnesses, the presiding officer saw nothing wrong and deemed the statements Khadr made during those brutal interrogations admissible evidence. There isn't a civilian court in the western world that would have done the same

could go on. And on. But I think the point is clear. The handling of Omar Khadr's case more closely resembles justice in China or Iran than it does justice in Canada or any nation whose judicial procedures deserve our respect.

So what does the plea bargain really mean? Khadr has already spent one-third of his life in prison. He is being tried by a stacked military commission. He faces the very real possibility of spending the rest of his life in a locked box. And so, on Monday, after eight years maintaining his innocence, Khadr confessed. Sure. He's a terrorist. Whatever.

A coerced confession is no confession. And if Omar Khadr's confession cannot be described as coerced, the word should be stricken from the dictionary.

But not according to the Serious People. He confessed. He's guilty. And if his lawyer says "it's all a fiction," well, pass the smelling salts and start the investigation. Someone may have fibbed! Goodness. Fibbing is wrong.

And so it is. But you know what's worse? Grotesque abuses of human rights. Profound violations of the rule of law. And, most of all, torture.

We now have abundant evidence that high-ranking officials in the last U.S. government authorized all these acts. Yes, even torture. Dick Cheney all but boasted about it.

Torture is a major crime under international law and the law of every civilized nation. And authorizing torture is no different than personally inflicting it. So we have compelling reasons to believe U.S. officials up to and including President George W. Bush committed major crimes.

But Serious People never call those officials "suspected criminals." Indeed, they never discuss their criminal culpability at all. They even roll their eyes when some odd person suggests that Bush, Cheney, and the rest may be criminals who should be held responsible for their actions. You're not a Serious Person if you say that.

But Omar Khadr is a "confessed terrorist." That's what Serious People say.

Dan Gardner's column appears Wednesday and Friday.

http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=8ce20763-8f5a-4c19-a290-3345934a509f&p=1

[JAH]

Let me tell you in very clear and precise terms....Rules of Engagement and Standing Order do not supercede certain International and Domestic Laws with respect to Canadian children, in a war zone by U.S. or Canadian Troops.

[JAH]

Pretty clearly wrong.

[JAH]

A coerced confession is no confession. And if Omar Khadr's confession cannot be described as coerced, the word should be stricken from the dictionary.

[Sharpshooter]

Post the contravention. Remember, he is NOT a soldier as defined by the GC.

[JAH]

He was a 15 year old child, when he was detained, in an international armed conflict. He was afforded rights under the GC Protocols and remedies from the CRC(Convention on the Rights of the Child)

[Sharpshooter]

I think you could definately argue that his confession under interogation in Gitmo was coerced (clearly it was). However, he entered a not guilty plea in open court, and then about faced, under NO INTEROGATION OR DURESS, to being guilty.

He is guilty. This is deemed by the court and most importantly, by him in open court.

[Sharpshooter]

You'll note it says 'under 15'....he wasn't under 15, he was 15.

The devil is in the details.

[JAH]

Again, you don't know what you're talking about....there was no open court....it was a unconstitutionally and internationally unrecognized military tribunal against a civilian.

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim him to be not a Prisoner of war and then subject him to a military tribunal. And you can't call him a civilian and deny him a civialian court and trial.

He's not guilty because any court would have thrown this case out. And you're contradiction in aknowledging that he was coerced in confessing but not in changing his plea is ******* mindboggling. He chose a plea deal to come back to Canada vs staying in Gitmo for the rest of his life....that's not a form of coercion??

***!?

[JAH]

You're right, the devil is indeed in the details. Anything else?

Funny, your link is dead.

By the vaguness of your post, it appears as if it's saying that 15 is the minimum age of soldiering? If so, you have proved that if he abided by the 3rd GC wrt to waging war (as posted in my previous post), he would have been afforded the protections of the 4th GC. He did not, and was not protected.

[Wetcoaster]

The Third GC clearly states:

Article 4 defines prisoners of war to include:

4.1.1 Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict and members of militias of such armed forces

4.1.2 Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, provided that they fulfill all of the following conditions:

-that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

-that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I);

-that of carrying arms openly;

-that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. '

If he were a soldier, he would have been afforded the protections of a PW. He was not. I bolded the parts that Khadr and his merry band of murderous scumbags that precluded them from these protections.

[Sharpshooter]

My point was that the interogations were stopped and weren't returning. We were in the trial stage, not the investigation stage. I could even see if he pleaded guilty as a result of the interogations, but even they did not break him of his resolve for he entered a ng plea in court. It was AFTER the interogations stopped, and AFTER he entered his plea of ng that he about faced and changed it to guilty. No duress, no interogations, no torture. There was never a threat of Gitmo for the rest of his life. A US Federal Pen, yes, but not Gitmo. That place is being shut down. Get your facts straight.

And I have repeatedly stated that I think the trial and charge of murder was bs. Don't put words in my mouth.

[Sharpshooter]

Funny, your link is dead.

By the vaguness of your post, it appears as if it's saying that 15 is the minimum age of soldiering? If so, you have proved that if he abided by the 3rd GC wrt to waging war (as posted in my previous post), he would have been afforded the protections of the 4th GC. He did not, and was not protected.

[JAH]

Again, you're failing to recognise that the coercion of threatening Omar with lifelong incarceration at Gitmo(something that hasn't shutdown just yet and something that Omar has or would have no material knowledge to being shutdown) or the chance to get out of that place and back to Canada, even if it means incarceration in Canada, that in itself is coercive enough to make him change his plea. You dangle water in front of a thirsty person, and they'll reach for the water, even if it's polluted.

Do you not recognize that connection? Would you not do the same? I would....and most rational people in an irrational situation would too.