Sunday, May 02, 2010

Omar Khadr's show trial

Skdadl reminds us that Harper sent a wee tepid request to the US government asking that the Khadr kangaroo show trial :
"not use as evidence in legal proceedings there any evidence collected at GTMO by Canadian agents and representatives, which the Supreme Court of Canada has said (2008) was collected in violation of Omar Khadr's rights."
Steve to Obama : nudge, nudge, wink, wink
What to do ... what to do...

McClatchy :
"Earlier Saturday, officers cleared reporters and observers from the hearing to screen a 2003 interrogation video that they said was classified, though it was made public by Canada's Supreme Court two years ago and is available on YouTube.

The video shows the Toronto-born teen weeping in a Guantanamo interrogation booth and pleading for help from his Canadian interrogator.

Reporters locked out of that portion of the hearing watched the video on YouTube in a media center in a crude abandoned airport hangar below the hilltop tribunal chamber."

The other bizarre incident of the day was testimony from the Army Special Forces officer, an assistant police chief in civilian life, who initially reported that the person who threw the grenade at Army Sgt Speer died in the firefight. This is the crime Khadr is charged with; if the grenade thrower died, then it wasn't Khadr.

Defense lawyers discovered this report had later been altered to say that Khadr may have survived - what they termed "manufactured evidence" - but that turns out to have been just an honest mistake :
"W said he didn't realize that he got the report wrong until some investigators preparing for Khadr's trial visited him “a few years later.” So he opened it up on his computer and fixed it."
A few years later. Even though, according to Paul Koring , "he had known within days of the original firefight that Mr. Khadr had survived. "

Well alrighty then. It seems to me there have been hundreds if not thousands of people 'not in uniform' in Afghanistan who could be charged with throwing grenades at the US troops occupying their country. Where's their show trials?

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