U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO -- Omar Khadr appears for the first time Thursday before a military judge whose reputation for working quickly through trial preliminaries has earned him the nickname "rocket-docket."As the prosecution presses for an early trial date, army Col. Patrick Parrish is expected to process a virtual conveyor belt of defence motions more rapidly than his predecessor, who refused to be rushed. Mr. Khadr's defence team does not want to go to trial, arguing the proceedings before the United States war crimes commissions at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, are unfair.
But Mr. Parrish, who has been on the job for a little more than two weeks, has already shown his determination to press on. On the weekend, he rejected a request from Mr. Khadr's defence lawyers to postpone Thursday's hearing to give them more time to assess the implications of last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling on detainee rights.
Against that backdrop, navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, Mr. Khadr's military-appointed defence lawyer, will use Thursday's hearing to argue that the entire case against the Toronto-born accused terrorist should be thrown out on grounds U.S. authorities have never told him of his rights.
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Key among them are the service records of a Sgt. Joshua Claus, who was Mr. Khadr's chief interrogator in the three months he was held in Afghanistan's Bagram detention facility, and who was later court-martialed for his role in the death of another detainee there. Mr. Claus, who has since said he treated Mr. Khadr well, wrote in a recent e-mail under a return address marked "hellspawn" that he would not voluntarily speak with the defence.
Mr. Kuebler suspects it was "standard operating procedure" for interrogators to impose punishments every time a detainee gave answers that deviated from a version of events they had been given, or that they thought were otherwise untrue.
In M. Khadr's case, the authorities' dominant scenario suggested Mr. Khadr had been the only al-Qaeda suspect still alive in the 2002 firefight when someone tossed a hand grenade that fatally wounded a U.S. serviceman. Mr. Kuebler says Mr. Khadr, in those early months, gave a statement that not only reflected that, but also said he'd tossed the grenade after eyeing the serviceman treat another U.S. soldier for battlefield wounds.
But as time went on, his statements changed to reflect a new scenario that emerged after the authorities realized Mr. Khadr's gunshot injuries showed he'd been shot in the back, and shrapnel injuries to his eyes showed it was unlikely he could see anything. "So, we know Omar was giving false statements," Mr. Kuebler said in an interview.
In any eventual trial, defence strategy will be to discredit all of Mr. Khadr's detention statements, which Mr. Kuebler believes are the backbone of the prosecution's evidence against him.
| This is why we can't settle these issues in court. |
While last week's Supreme Court ruling applies most directly to detainees held without charge, Mr. Kuebler said aspects could still apply to Khadr, who faces five war crimes charges that include murder. "In theory, we could go to the federal court to say that the military commissions have no jurisdiction over Omar Khadr," he said.
Mr. Khadr, now 21, faces up to life imprisonment if convicted.