Canadian Teen Omar Khadr Closer to Guantánamo Trial
The trial of Omar Khadr, the 19-year-old Canadian accused of murdering SFC Christopher Speer, is finally moving forward at Guantánamo Bay.
Pentagon Moves To Try 19-Year-Old (Miami Herald)
The Bush administration moved closer Thursday to putting a Canadian teenager on trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, assigning a Marine colonel to run his war-crimes court even as civilian judges have mostly stalled the process. The Pentagon named Col. Robert Chester, 51, a Marine since 1976, as presiding officer of the military commission for Omar Khadr, 19, who was captured in Afghanistan.
The Toronto-born teen is accused of multiple war crimes, including taking part in a July 27, 2002, firefight near Khost, Afghanistan, in which five Americans were wounded while attacking an alleged al Qaeda compound.
U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a Special Forces medic from New Mexico, died of his wounds 11 days later, in Germany. Another American lost an eye in the attack, and could be called as a witness.
The irony is that this case is controversial because the United States military is providing less due process than would be the case in an ordinary murder trial, yet far more due process than normally accorded unprivileged belligerents in a combat zone. Khadr should have been given a summary trial in Afghanistan and, if judged guilty, executed there. Taking him to Cuba and allowing this to drag on for years has made him a sympathetic figure.
Elsewhere:
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CBC News has an excellent backgrounder on Sadr and his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, a senior al Qaeda leader who was killed in a raid in Pakistan in 2003.
CTV provides a good overview of the issues in this particular case.
Michelle Malkin has been covering this one for several months.
Update: Substantial discussion in the comments about the nature of unprivileged belligerents and the moral issues surrounding this case.
ah “normally accorded unpriviledged belligerents in a combat zone” is an interesting phrase.
I thought this term was a new invention. Anybody have a reference to “unprivileged belligerents” previous to 2000?
I was doing a little surfing, and noticed that the British did not recognize American rebels as POWs until a law was passed in 1782 classifying them as such.
I don’t believe they ever “summarily tried and executed” anyone caught on a battlefield before (or after) that date.
How do you suppose history would have judged them if they had?
(if the crime was ‘taking part in a firefight’ i’m sure many rebels met that criteria.)
Odo: The term is, so far as I know, of recent coinage. The concept, however, is as old as the law of war.
The Geneva Conventions and other international agreements provide protected status for noncombatants and for combatants acting for their government while in uniform. Spies, mercenaries, and others fighting out of uniform are, with a few caveats, not entitled to either of those “privileged” statuses.
Frederic Kirgis notes that,
Even unprivileged belligerents have certain due process rights, but they are lesser and different from those accorded EPWs.
Odo: The laws of war (at least those relating to the conduct of war, or jus in bello, vice the justice of entering a war, or jus ad bellum) were just developing at that point. The Continental Army was a uniformed military force, though, fighting an open war. The people charged here are combatants fighting in another country and not under command of a national army. Those are very different statuses in the law of war and have been since they were first conceived.
I just said that the British did not recognize the Americans as a uniformed military force until 1782:
http://earlyamerica.com/review/2002_summer_fall/pows.htm
Second, we know this coinage is about convenience. If Lincoln had wanted to be an SOB, he could have said that southern citizens were “unprivileged belligerentsâ€Â
Many of the reasons the British, and north Americans, made their choices apply today. It was to their advantage to take the high moral ground.
Calling for the summary trial and execution of 15 year olds (age when captured) does not take the high ground. In fans the flames .. but then so often your posts fan the flames. I mean, you are a voice for endless war.
If we follow your advice my little nephews are going to be serving in Iraq.
Odo: Really, you should read and digest the discussion before responding to it.
Did you write:
If I’m understanding you, a 15 year old (now 19), caught on a battlefield, in an open firefight, should have been tried and executed, yes?
Odo:
Yes. We try 15-year-olds for murder all the time and this one is killing American soldiers while fighting for foreign terrorists overseas. The only reason for not executing such a person is if there is reason to believe he has substantial intelligence value.
James, either you have a sloppy mind or you are aware of the holes in your argument and are just trying to push all the hot buttons in your audience.
1. Do we execute 15 year olds all the time?
2. Do we equate all fighters with terrorists?
3. Do you have evidence that this is a terrorist?
4. Do you think executing 15 year olds advances pro-American feelings amongst Iraqis?
5. Do you think executing 15 year olds increases the likelyhood that future Iraqi governments will be pro-American?
6. Do you think executing 15 year olds increases our ability to work with other middle east nations?
7. Do you think executing 15 year olds advances the American position world-wide?
BTW, if there was evidence for #3 I’d be taking a different line on this.
Odo: Evidence other than the fact that he was fighting with al Qaeda against U.S. troops and that his father was a senior al Qaeda leader?
James, you just keep going deeper.
8. Do we execute 15 year olds based on who their father is?
The bottom line is that the British could have used your argument to hang 15 year olds they captured early in the revolutionary war. They didn’t, for all the right reasons.
Honestly, your arguments sound more like Nazi/Soviet justifications for their suppression of resistance groups.
Odo: For, what, the fourth time now: American soldiers, even in the War for Independence, fought in uniform. Khadr and company did not.
And the fact that his father was a senior al Qaeda operative is certainly relevant buttressing evidence. But the son was a member, too.
From the summary of charges:
No James, not everyone had a uniform.
And the British did not recognize them as soldiers in any army. Did you read the bit about the British addressing their letters to “George Washingtion, Esq.” and the Americans returning them because “General Washington was in command of the American army but that plain Mr. Washington was unknown in the army.”
You are second-guessing, and pretending the British took your position, when they clearly did not.
I think you are taking the term “uniformed army” a little too literally. We know the British did not recognize them as such, and we know that they did not have uniforms in the early part of the conflict:
Get that, “their work or hunting clothes”
http://www2.powercom.net/~rokats/contarmy.html
“Calling for the summary trial and execution of 15 year olds (age when captured) does not take the high ground.”
Yes, we should just shoot them on the battlefield.
This isn’t about wearing uniforms or not, it’s about punks with AKs.
That does simplify things LJD.
The thing is, it isn’t that much more complicated if the “punk with an AK” throws it down and surrenders. What you do is, call him a POW, keep him for a years, and then give him back to the democratically elected government of Iraq. What happens next is their problem.
There isn’t a significant need here to open the moral can of worms. It isn’t like we need to let him out to settle in San Diego.
Odo: Your contention, then, is that al Qaeda would have been in uniform if only they had the financial wherewithal? And that, in any case, they were a legitimate military force fighting under the auspicies of their government?
And what about
I’ve provided evidence.
Are you inventing a new military law, that armies should buy uniforms when they can afford them?
Perhaps our revolutionary army should have bought uniforms first and guns second?
And #3 said he was a terrorist. Have you documented acts by this persron off the battlefield, targeted against civilians?
Isn’t it true that successufl insurgencies tend to buy uniforms … after they win?
We’re going down the wrong path again anyway. The question isn’t whether you (or this administration) can make a rule under which this 15 year old will get the death penalty.
The question is whether that really advances our national interest (and preserves our morality).
I argue that it is morally questionable, and undermines our national interest. As I said, calling anyone collected on a battlefield a POW is cleaner, simpler, and (considering that we get to re-export them to Iraq) more effective.
Now, if you can catch someone laying a bomb in an Iraqi city, by all means try them in Iraqi courts for attempted mass murder.
A couple of things…
This enemy is one that has been known to wear and remove uniforms (if not of the Iraqi Army, then the Police), or carry weapons, toss them, and access addtional cached arms, when convenient.
The individual in this case was not simply “collected” on the battlefield. It sounds to me like witnesses are capable of putting him in the action.
Again, he’s lucky to have drawn breath for this long, considering what he did and to whom.
So how is the “morality” any different with a 15-year old terrorist than a 80 year old one? What if the little punk was “laying a bomb in an Iraqi city”? Any idea how many minor Somalis were killed in Mogadishu in ’93?
I think you have some assuptions that you need to work through.
Speaking of uniforms, what does James think about our SOF guys running around Afghanistan with beards and dressing in all sorts of non-uniforms carrying weapons and shooting them at people?
I see it now! We let Al-Qaida win in Iraq and then wait for them to buy uniforms, then odograph saves his precious little Omar Khadr from a big, bad trial in Gitmo.
DC Loser: My understanding from my training as a cadet was that soldiers caught in a combat zone disguised in mufti were automatically considered spies. Apparently, though, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
There was a good discussion of this topic in a DoD news conference in April 2003:
Briefing on Geneva Convention, EPW’s and War Crimes
Also of interest from FindLaw:
Perhaps more importantly, this discussion from Daniel Moran is instructive:
I probably shouldn’t let the most sophomoric taunts get under my skin:
So I’m just going to ask you to explain it to me in hard-as-nails cost and benefits analysis. I say that the lowest costs and greatest benefits, for the US (no one else) come from treating people capture on the battlefield as POWs, holding them for some years, and then handing them back to Afghanistan/Iraq (wherever they were captured).
If you think someone is unsalvageable, destined to be a terrorist for life, the rational thing to do (from a standpoint of realpolitik) is to suggest that Afghanistan/Iraq either off them or throw away the key.
The only benefit I see, in distorting our justice system to try 15 year olds capture in battle, is that it satisfies some primitive blood lust. Try to rise above that, be cold and calculating, and describe what brings the maximum benefit for your kids and grand kids.