Last week, Omar Khadr, the 21-year-old Canadian national and son of an al-Qaeda financier, was formally charged with killing an American soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. Khadr was 15 at the time of his arrest and therefore a minor. According to international standards, children who are pressed into service are considered victims of war and are not supposed to be tried for war crimes. Amnesty International, Unicef, and other organizations have tried to intercede on Khadr’s behalf and convince the US to send him back to Canada.
As Kadr’s attorneys stated in a brief submitted to the judge, Col. Peter Brownback, “If jurisdiction is exercised over Mr. Khadr, the military judge will be the first in western history to preside over the trial of alleged war crimes committed by a child. No international criminal tribunal established under the laws of war, from Nuremberg forward, has ever prosecuted former child soldiers as war criminals … A critical component of the response of our nation and the world to the tragedy of the use and abuse of child solders in war by terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda is that post-conflict legal proceedings must pursue the best interest of the victimized child – with the aim of their rehabilitation and reintegration into society, not their imprisonment or execution.”
Read the rest (especially the accidental release of exculpating evidence) at:
Recent Comments