Lawyer faints as Khadr trial opens

Source: Al Jazeera

Lawyer faints as Khadr trial opens

UPDATED ON:
Friday, August 13, 2010
04:53 Mecca time, 01:53 GMT

Guantanamo Bay's youngest detainee has told interrogators he was a member of al-Qaeda and described pulling the pin of a grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan, a prosecutor told a military tribunal at the detention facility in Cuba.

But Omar Khadr's defence lawyer said those were the words of a scared child whose interrogators frightened him into giving a false confession by making up a tale of a young boy gang-raped and killed in prison.

"It is only after that story is told to Omar Khadr that he admits to throwing anything. He told them what they wanted to hear," Army Lieutenant Colonel Jon Jackson said on Thursday.

The first day of testimony ended early and dramatically when Jackson fainted in the courtroom. He was questioning a witness, asked for a recess and then fell to the floor.

Jackson suffered complications related to recent gall bladder surgery and was in the base hospital.



Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/08/201081302542266108.html

with gang rape and murder, he'll tell you anything you want to know. Is anyone really shocked at that?

What kind of book are we making on whether the "trial" will just continue without his lawyer present?

The USA is the only country to prosecute a child soldier out of a misguided sense of revenge, the same revenge that made us kill over 600,000 Iraqi civilians.