Omar Khadr pleads guilty to all terrorism charges

Source: The Globe and Mail

Omar Khadr, the only Canadian, only child soldier and only Guantanamo Bay detainee charged with battlefield homicide in the killing a U.S. soldier, pleaded guilty to all terrorism and murder charges on Monday.

... Wearing a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie, the tall, burly and bearded Mr. Khadr, was sworn in shortly after 9 a.m. Within minutes it became clear that the long, much-disrupted legal process at his war crimes trial was coming to a plea-bargained end.

... Mr. Khadr’s guilty plea makes him only the fifth person convicted of war crimes at Guantanamo, the notorious complex of prisons built on a U.S. naval base leased from Cuba. The others include three functionaries to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden: his driver, a bodyguard, his propaganda chief and an Australian convert to Islam who was picked up in Afghanistan. Hundreds of others have been freed from the notorious detention camp.

Mr. Khadr, the only Canadian and the last Westerner left in Guantanamo, was long seen as an important test case of the former Bush administration controversial decision to put a child soldier on trial in apparent contravention of international treaties requiring that juvenile combatants be treated as victims, not war criminals.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/omar-khadr-pleads-guilty-to-all-terrorism-charges/article1771325/

...

The Obama administration that allowed this travesty of justice to continue, or the Conservative government in Canada that refused to intervene to stop it.

I'm sitting in a sovereign nation. A foreign country sends a military unit and starts shooting at me. I shoot back. I'm captured.

Now, the country that invaded another country and shot at me wants to put me on trial for murder, for defending myself against an invading army?

But, of course, if another sovereign nation wants to hold private contractors to account for shooting and killing unarmed civilians in *their* courts, well, no, of course, that, that won't do at all.

The "law" is losing all pretense of being anything but a tool for the people with the bigger guns.

"Is justice, just ice?" (Joni Mitchell)

And I'm where I am because my father took me there. (As a minor, I don't really have the right to say, "No, Dad, I don't want to live where you tell me.") And you're not just shooting at me, but him, too. And you killed him.

But I'm the one on trial for "murder."

:puke:

It was spelled out in detail in Additional Protocol I of 1977: in the event of invasion if the residents of a country spontaneously take up arms to repel the invaders, then their status is "privileged combatants" and they must be treated as POWs in event of capture.

The catch: the US is one of only five countries in the world that never ratified Additional Protocol I and so does not feel obligated to follow it.

sad day for justice in the reality based community, but the war on terror heads will buy just about anthing as long as it keeps their war machine alive,. what an upsidedown world we are dieing in.

Anything to make the torturer's go away.

Thank you, George W. Bush, for keeping us safe! I'm sure this will be the end of it, and there will be nothing further to hear from the terrorists who hate us for our freedom. And not because we torture them and put on kangaroo courts to slap a patina of legality over our atrocities, so stop saying that!

We all know that there had to have been a deal.

The US NEEDED a conviction. In return for a guilty plea, what kind of leniency will he get?

It is a fucking shame that we couldn't have real courts, real laws, real evidence, with people really held accountable for only things that are really illegal.

Torture should never have happened, and those who did torture should have been on trial too. This sham tribunal should never have happened. This whole thing stinks.

I predict that somewhere down the road we are going to see news reports one after another as classified information leak pealing this apart like a rotten onion, and we are going to find out horrible details behind the scenes of this verdict that are going to make us sick. :(

"Plead guilty (and we'll keep you here forever), or we'll keep you here forever," that sort of thing.

He would not be found guilty by a kangaroo court and then spend the rest of his life in jail.

He will spend one year in a US prison and then be accepted for transfer to a Canadian prison. (This part I still doubt will happen.)

After one year in a Canadian prison he will be eligible for parole.

He maintains the right to sue the Canadian government in the future.

He has agreed that he does not have the right to sue the US government.

Imo all of the whole lot is garbage. It just follows the golden rule. Now one has to question former trials by military.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/10/25/omar-khadr-trial-resumes.html
Monday, October 25, 2010 | 6:29 PM ET

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/10/25/omar-khadr-trial-resumes.html

ironically, of course, the chumps behind this farce are the actual war criminals. Their day will come and their necks will make a fine swing.

K&R.