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Just as soon as Omar Khadr’s trial began, it’s stopped; Khadr’s lawyer, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, collapsed in the courthouse late yesterday. Doctors suspect it is related to a surgery Jackson had six weeks earlier, but nonetheless the judge ordered a thirty-day recess. This is, of couse, on top of the several years’ delay Khadr saw in detention before coming before a military tribunal this summer to answer for alleged war crimes, specifically the death of an American soldier by a grenade Khadr threw.
During the trial’s first day, evidence was presented to the court of Khadr handling bomb-making materials from an al-Qaeda-published video.
The video of Khadr was introduced as one of the first pieces of evidence recovered along with bomb-making materials from a mud-walled compound in eastern Afghanistan where he allegedly threw the grenade that killed Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, New Mexico during a four-hour firefight on 27 July 2002.
Khadr has denied throwing the grenade and Jackson said another fighter lobbed the explosive before he was killed by a US soldier who also shot Khadr twice in the back.
No eyewitness saw Khadr throw the grenade. Defence lawyers say the case depends on purported confessions extracted through mistreatment, including an interrogation conducted while Khadr was still on a stretcher in Bagram, Afghanistan.
But does a thirty day recess help or harm the case? As charged as it is, and after pushing several years for the trial to come before a tribunal, thirty days may not make or break anything. Still, it doesn’t help that one day in everything’s put on hold.
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Having had gallbladder surgery myself some 28 years ago, I can appreciate how it might cause problems (I had an infected incision that bothered me for a bit after the original surgery)
The question has no meaning, as the entire process is flawed, a kangaroo court. To even ask such a question (and this is not to offend or blame Karaka, as this is a very standard question), in my opinion, is totally besides the point. This is not a legitimate court. To ask whether the trial will now be more or less legitimate because of this recess makes no sense to me. Instead, it plays into discussion of the trial in such a way as to subtly countenance it.
Khadr, a 15-year-old caught helping defend his home in a fire-fight with U.S. forces, is a “child soldier” (if even that is a fair term for someone captured defending their actual home, not “homeland”), and as such, should not be tried, as not culpable for his actions. Furthermore, we have knowledge of suppressed evidence in the case. Beyond that, the MCAs are unconstitutional courts, so ruled by the Supreme Court, now retooled by the Obama administration, but still left a star chamber that allows tortured evidence.
Why wait 30 days? Release Omar Khadr now.
Book Salon up with Thomas Geoghegan’s Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life hosted by masaccio
Hear! Hear!
It all speaks of very, very bad karma for the MCAs, n’est-ce pas?
My respect for Omar Khadr grows.
Fair point, Jeff. But I think it’s unlikely that the case will be overturned; once the judge agreed to admit Khadr’s “confession”, despite it being conducted under duress, nee questionable circumstances, the snowball was going to continue until a verdict was made. It was with that context that I asked the question.