By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 3:37pm
President-elect Barack Obama will make history on his inauguration day. And if a scheduled Guantánamo military commission trial goes forward on January 26, President-elect Obama will make a wholly different kind of history, by presiding over a terrible historical event.
On January 26, Guantánamo detainee Omar Khadr, a 22-year-old Canadian national who has been held at Guantánamo for nearly one-third of his life, is slated to be tried by military commission for war crimes allegedly committed when he was 15. If Omar Khadr's trial goes forward as scheduled on January 26, one of the first acts of President-elect Obama's administration will be to preside over the first war crimes prosecution of a child soldier in U.S. history.
Yesterday marked the final military commission hearing before the eve of President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. The question of what will become of Guantánamo was a subject of much speculation in the days before yesterday's pre-trial hearing in the case of Saudi national Ahmed Mohammed al Darbi. Al Darbi has been held in U.S. custody for six years and is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism based on alleged connections to al-Qaeda.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 7:58pm
An AP article today announced the Pentagon has admitted that 12 children under the age of 18 have been held at Guantánamo since it opened in 2002. The news report comes on the heels of a study released last week by the U.C. Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, showing that the U.S. has held at least 12 juveniles at Guantánamo.
Thursday’s hearing in Afghan national Mohammed Jawad’s case brought stunning testimony on serious abuse he suffered at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan as a teenager, as well as military psychologists’ role in crafting abusive interrogation methods for use on Jawad and other prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 5:07pm
Yesterday was an emotional day of testimony from widow Tabitha Speer and Omar Khadr. As a reminder, on Monday, Khadr pled guilty as part of a plea agreement to all of the charges against him, including throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer eight years ago. We are now in the sentencing phase of the case.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 2:49pm
Since Omar Khadr's guilty plea this Monday, the case has moved into the sentencing phase, and a panel of senior military officers has been hearing testimony about mitigating and aggravating factors. Khadr's actual sentence is capped under the plea bargain agreement, the terms of which have not been disclosed to the jury. Now 24, Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and has spent a third of his life at Guantánamo.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 11:22am
Yesterday, Canadian detainee Omar Khadr pled guilty to all five charges against him, in an 11th-hour plea deal that averted the scheduled resumption of his military commission trial. Imprisoned since his capture in Afghanistan at age 15, Khadr has spent a third of his life in U.S. detention.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 11:27am
Before Omar Khadr's trial ground to a halt last week, the sentencing hearing of 50-year-old detainee Ibrahim al-Qosi continued apace. Al-Qosi is the first detainee to be convicted in the military commissions under the Obama administration, in a plea deal in which he admitted to being an al Qaeda cook and occasional driver.
During the two days of sentencing hearings, everyone in the room other than the jurors knew that there had been a secret plea agreement capping the actual amount of time al-Qosi will serve at 10 years (two years in addition to the eight he's already served). On Monday, the judge, Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, ruled that this true sentence would be kept secret until the military commissions' Convening Authority approves it, at an unspecified date. The jurors were only given the enumerated charges to which al-Qosi had pled guilty, and had to set a formal sentence based on that information.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 1:19pm
Friday morning, the first trial at Gitmo under President Obama was suspended because the defendant's lawyer, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, collapsed and had to be medevacked off the base for medical treatment. He's been given 30 days' convalescence leave. In a closed-door meeting in his chambers Friday, the military judge declared Omar Khadr's trial on hold for at least 30 days. The scheduled hearing was cancelled and the jury was never brought back into court.
By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 11:02am
Yesterday, I witnessed history being made here in Guantánamo, as jury selection began today in the first war crimes prosecution of a child soldier since World War II, and the first ever in U.S. history.
Accused of throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer and participating in a terrorist conspiracy beginning when he was only 10 years old, Khadr literally has grown up at Guantánamo. Now 23, the full beard Khadr has grown since his imprisonment in 2002 obscures the fact that he was only 15 at the time he was shot and captured by U.S. forces.
