Canadian faces spy, murder charges

MIAMI -- The Pentagon yesterday charged a 20-year-old Canadian with murder and other war crimes for his alleged role in fighting US forces in Afghanistan, including a 2002 grenade attack that killed a US Army medic.

Omar Ahmed Khadr was 15 at the time of the clash between invading US forces and Al Qaeda-backed Taliban militants in which Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer was fatally wounded, two Afghan militiamen killed, and several US soldiers injured.

The charges referred to the reconstituted military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, accuse Khadr of murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying. They were filed by the commissions' convening authority, Susan J. Crawford, who serves an attorney general-like role in the military judicial process.

Although a murder charge can carry a death penalty, Khadr's case was defined in the charge sheet as "non-capital," apparently in view of his age at the time of the alleged offenses.

Khadr is only the second of Guantanamo's 385 war-on-terror prisoners to be charged under the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which Congress passed three months after a Supreme Court ruling that President Bush overstepped his powers in 2001 when he unilaterally created the tribunals.

The first case to be taken up at Guantanamo under the new process was that of Australian David Hicks, who pleaded guilty last month in exchange for a drastically reduced sentence of nine months, most to be served in his homeland.

Hicks, 31, had been held at Guantanamo since January 2002, and his prolonged incarceration became a political issue in the reelection campaign of Prime Minister John Howard of Australia . The plea bargain nullified a decision by the military commissioners to impose a further seven-year sentence and was seen as a political favor to Howard by the Bush administration.

Wounded when captured in July 2002, Khadr was one of 10 Guantanamo prisoners charged under the previous military commissions.

Khadr's father, Islamic radical Ahmad Said al-Khadr, brought his son to Al Qaeda camps and safe houses in Afghanistan and Pakistan from the time he was a preschooler. The Egyptian-born elder Khadr, who Pakistani authorities say they killed in a 2003 firefight, held a senior financial position with Al Qaeda and brought his sons with him on visits to Osama bin Laden.

Attorneys who represented the Toronto-born Khadr in the first, truncated prosecution had argued that he was a victim of child abuse rather than a self-determined jihadist.

One of Khadr's civilian lawyers, Muneer Ahmad, a law professor at American University, said the government was proceeding against his client "in an attempt to rehabilitate the military commissions, which Hicks's plea demonstrated is a tainted process."

Ahmad also stated that Crawford had removed several references to Khadr's father from the charge sheet, in what he saw as an attempt to prevent potential jurors from learning of his early exposure to radical Islam.

"What they are trying to do is punish Omar for the perceived sins of the father," Ahmad said.

Under the new commissions' rules, Khadr must be arraigned within 30 days and his trial begun within four months.

The chief prosecutor for the commissions, Air Force Colonel Morris Davis, has said he expects to bring charges against about 75 Guantanamo detainees.