US case against Omar Khadr falling apart

Alternet describes how the U.S. government's sham case against Omar Khadr is deservedly falling apart.

Following the outspoken resignation of former prosecutor Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld and the Pentagon's desperate decision to drop charges against five prisoners to prevent Vandeveld from testifying for the defense, the latest news to rock the Commissions is that the trial of Omar Khadr -- a supposedly flagship case, along with that of the Yemeni Salim Hamdan, who received a surprisingly light sentence after a trial this summer -- has been delayed until after the administration leaves office.

This is a bitter blow for the government, which has been pushing to prosecute Khadr for war crimes since 2005. Its first attempt failed, when the Supreme Court ruled that the whole enterprise was illegal, but after the Commissions were bandaged up by Congress and resumed their ghoulish existence in 2007, Khadr was once more put forward for trial.

This was in spite of the fact that his tenacious lawyers -- both military and civilian -- have questioned the very basis of the "war crimes" charges (which essentially transform combatants in war into "terrorists"), and have unearthed evidence (despite systemic obstruction) that Khadr may not have been responsible for the main crime for which he is charged (throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier). Focusing on the fact that Khadr was just 15 years old when he was seized in July 2002, they have also persistently pointed out the cruel folly, injustice and illegality of prosecuting a juvenile for war crimes, when the UN Convention on the rights of children in wartime, to which the U.S. is a signatory, requires juveniles -- those under the age of 18 when the alleged crime took place -- to be rehabilitated rather than punished.

Last week, in pre-trial hearings, they reprised some of these arguments, and also sought access to seven interrogators, from various intelligence agencies, who, they insist, extracted coerced confessions from Khadr, who was severely wounded, while he was detained in the U.S. prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, before his transfer to Guantánamo. According to the lawyers, the information extracted from Khadr under duress was then used as the basis for interrogations at Guantánamo using more "sterile" and "benign" techniques, in much the same way that the administration has attempted to cover up its torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other "high-value detainees" in secret CIA custody by using "clean teams" of FBI agents to extract new confessions in Guantánamo.