Gitmo Tribunal Drops Charges Against 15 Year Old Canadian
The original article is here. I posted earlier on the pending trial of this youngster, and now it appears as if the tribunal judge in charge has sided with me and what I view as an appropriate application of justice.
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - The military judge presiding at Omar Khadr’s war crimes tribunal dismissed all the charges against the young Canadian on Monday, saying he did not meet the definition of those subject to trial under a new law.
Army Col. Peter Brownback said a military review board had labeled Khadr an “enemy combatant” during a 2004 hearing in Guantanamo.
But the Military Commissions Act adopted by the U.S. Congress in 2006 said only “unlawful enemy combatants” could be tried in the Guantanamo tribunals. Brownback said Khadr did not meet that strict definition.
This was the latest setback for the Bush government’s efforts to put the Guantanamo detainees through some form of judicial process. It was forced to rewrite the rules last year after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed the old tribunals illegal.
Brownback dismissed the charges, but left open the possibility that charges could be refiled if Khadr went back before a review board and was formally classified as an “unlawful enemy combatant.”
Khadr, who was captured in a firefight in Afghanistan at age 15, was accused of killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade and wounding another in a battle at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
He was also charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism along murder, attempted murder and spying, for allegedly conducting surveillance of U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan.
I agree with the result, but not the rationale. IMO, even if this young man can be reclassified as an, “unlawful enemy combatant”, he should remain unable to be tried as an adult.
For an individual to be guilty, there must be responsibility for the acts in question. While a 15 year old is able to have causal responsibility (insofar as he is actually the one who committed the crimes), a 15 year old is not old enough to be found morally responsible for their actions to a degree that warrants life in prison, capital punishment, or any other type of punishment beyond juvenile hall or an analogue. Mr. Khadr, in addition only being 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan, was also brainwashed by his jihadist father.
Several of Mr Khadr’s family members have been accused of ties to Islamist extremists. His Egyptian-born father, Ahmad Said al-Khadr, was killed in Pakistan in 2003 alongside senior al-Qaida operatives and Canada is holding Mr Khadr’s brother Abdullah on a US extradition warrant accusing him of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.
If Mr. Khadr had reached the age of 18, widely acknowledged as a legal age of consent and adulthood, when he committed these heinous acts; perhaps his responsibility for the crimes in question would make him more deserving of being tried as an adult, but he was only 15. In conducting these legally ambiguous tribunals that have previously been deemed illegal and modified to conform to law, it is of utmost importance to maintain a coherent and transparent variety of justice. As the world superpower, it is our responsibility to lead by example and trying 15 year olds is not the example we should enact.
Concurrently posted at The Arbuckle Institute
