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U.S. military files murder charge against young Guantanamo inmate

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 25, 2007

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The U.S. military filed a murder charge Tuesday against the Canadian son of an alleged al-Qaida financier who was detained as a teen in Afghanistan and has spent almost five years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Omar Khadr, now 20, allegedly joined the Taliban in Afghanistan and threw a grenade that killed a U.S. Green Beret in July 2002. He was captured as he lay wounded after that firefight at an al-Qaida compound in eastern Afghanistan.

The U.S. military charged him with murder, attempted murder, providing support to terrorism, conspiracy and spying under rules for military trials adopted last year and first used to try David Hicks, the Australian sentenced to nine months in prison after pleading guilty.

The military said the Toronto-born Khadr would be arraigned within 30 days. He faces up to life in prison.

Khadr's Pentagon-appointed defense attorney, Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, said the United States would become the first country in modern history to try a war crimes suspect who was a child at the time of the alleged violations. The conspiracy charge is based on acts allegedly committed when Khadr was younger than 10, Vokey said.

He urged Canada and the United States to negotiate a "political resolution" of the case.

Opponents of the Guantanamo Bay center criticized subjecting Khadr to the same military trial system as adult terror suspects. In any other conflict, he would have been treated as a child soldier, said Jumana Musa, advocacy director of Amnesty International.

"From the beginning, he was never treated in accordance with his age," Musa said. "He was treated like any adult taken into custody."

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said he must be held accountable.

"The Defense Department will continue to uphold the law and bring unlawful enemy combatants to justice through the military commissions process," he said.

The U.S. military said Khadr hurled a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., and wounded Army Sgt. Layne Morris of West Jordan, Utah. The charges say those acts were carried out "in violation of the law of war," but did not elaborate.

Speer's widow and Morris filed a lawsuit against Khadr and his father. In February, a judge awarded them $102.6-million.

The military alleges that Khadr also conducted surveillance of U.S. troops and planted land mines targeting American convoys.

Prosecutors say they plan to charge as many as 80 of the 385 men being held at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

[Last modified April 25, 2007, 01:35:33]