40 years

For admitting to killing an invading soldier in a firefight. As a child soldier.

From Ian Welsh:

Others have covered this more than I have, but to me the initial charges were always absurd.  He killed a soldier in a firefight in a country that the US invaded.  The idea that doing so qualifies as murder is ridiculous, unless we also want to charge everyone who kills an invading soldier with murder?  And, I suppose, charge every American soldier in Iraq (a clear case of pre-emptive war, illegal under the Geneva conventions and exactly what Americans hung Germans for at Nuremburg) with murder?

Kangaroo court justice, the victors punishing the losers, for “crimes” far more minor than those the victors have committed.  Get back to me when George Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Colin Powell are in the dock, and we’ll talk.

And don't expect a Khadr to be repatriated to Canada to serve out his sentence (after his initial year in solitary confinement). The Harper hillbillies are deep into punishment of anyone they don't like and happy to ignore the rule of law where such things are inconvenient to the pursuit of their rigid and thoughtless ideology. 

Canadian reporters banned from Gitmo

Skdadl reports that Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Steven Edwards of Canwest, Paul Koring of the Globe & Mail, and Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald have been banned by the US Dept. of Defense from covering any future trials at Gitmo because they divulged the names of two interrogator/witnesses at Omar Khadr's kangaroo pretrial.

Well it's a wee bit late for that, isn't it? Michelle Shephard already published the names and part of an interview with one of those witnesses in The Star nearly two years ago :

"Sgt. Joshua Claus was a slight, blond soldier with little experience and lots of responsibility when he became Khadr's interrogator in the cavernous U.S. prison in Bagram detainees nicknamed "The Barn."

Claus would later be convicted for his role in the death of another detainee at Bagram – an innocent Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar. Claus pleaded guilty to maltreatment and assault in return for a five-month jail sentence in 2005.

During the only interview Claus has granted, he told the Toronto Star any allegations of Khadr's mistreatment were false. "They're trying to imply I'm beating or torturing everybody I ever talked to," Claus said.

This ban means that the very reporters who've been providing such excellent coverage on Omar Khadr for years - Shephard has written a book on it - will not be able to report on his show trial when it finally gets underway.

Skdadl's source at Empty Wheel sums it up :

"So DOD is basically saying that once a reporter agrees to go to Gitmo, they lose the ability to report on stuff they have already reported on."

A week ago the military judge ordered reporters and spectators out of this same Gitmo courtroom while 'classified' video of an interview with Khadr was shown. The reporters adjourned to the media room and watched it on youtube instead.

Omar Khadr's show trial

Skdadl reminds us that Harper sent a wee tepid request to the US government asking that the Khadr kangaroo show trial :

"not use as evidence in legal proceedings there any evidence collected at GTMO by Canadian agents and representatives, which the Supreme Court of Canada has said (2008) was collected in violation of Omar Khadr's rights."

Steve to Obama : nudge, nudge, wink, wink
What to do ... what to do...

McClatchy :

"Earlier Saturday, officers cleared reporters and observers from the hearing to screen a 2003 interrogation video that they said was classified, though it was made public by Canada's Supreme Court two years ago and is available on YouTube.

The video shows the Toronto-born teen weeping in a Guantanamo interrogation booth and pleading for help from his Canadian interrogator.

Reporters locked out of that portion of the hearing watched the video on YouTube in a media center in a crude abandoned airport hangar below the hilltop tribunal chamber."

The other bizarre incident of the day was testimony from the Army Special Forces officer, an assistant police chief in civilian life, who initially reported that the person who threw the grenade at Army Sgt Speer died in the firefight. This is the crime Khadr is charged with; if the grenade thrower died, then it wasn't Khadr.

Defense lawyers discovered this report had later been altered to say that Khadr may have survived - what they termed "manufactured evidence" - but that turns out to have been just an honest mistake :

"W said he didn't realize that he got the report wrong until some investigators preparing for Khadr's trial visited him “a few years later.” So he opened it up on his computer and fixed it."

A few years later. Even though, according to Paul Koring , "he had known within days of the original firefight that Mr. Khadr had survived. "

Well alrighty then. It seems to me there have been hundreds if not thousands of people 'not in uniform' in Afghanistan who could be charged with throwing grenades at the US troops occupying their country. Where's their show trials?