U.S. military lawyer: Gitmo trials rigged.

I predict that Harper will not act. As my last article showed the charges against Khadr are themselves ludicrous. In war an enemy combatant certainly has the right to respond to an attack by killing the attackers without being charged with murder. The whole idiotic charge is simply an Orwellian manufacture made possible by the concept of an unlawful combatant. Very few have commented upon this bit of conceptual crapola.
It is not just that Khadr was a child and hence should be treated under the rules that Canada has agreed to as Dallaire rightfully points out, the whole charge is a monstrous perversion of justice in the first place.
Harper will not act because he will not suffer politically from going along with Bush since many Canadians have no more of a clue about the law or basic principles of justice than do Americans. Let''s not forget either that the Liberals knew all about the situation in Guantanamo and did exactly the same as the Conservatives when they (Liberals) were in power.


Gitmo trials rigged, PM should push for Khadr's return: U.S. military lawyer
10 hours ago
TORONTO — Despite Prime Minister Stephen Harper's assertion that Omar Khadr should be tried for war crimes in the United States, the American military lawyer who will defend the Canadian citizen at trial said Wednesday he doesn't believe justice will be done.
In a wide-ranging interview, Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler attacked the military commission that will try Khadr in October on charges he killed an American medic in Afghanistan when he was just 15.
"He's not going to get a fair trial," Kuebler told The Canadian Press from his office in Washington, D.C.
"Military commissions aren't designed to be fair. They're designed to produce convictions."
Harper could pre-empt the hearing by asking Washington to send Khadr - Guantanamo Bay's lone western detainee and also its youngest - back to Canada, Kuebler said.
"I hope that the prime minister of Canada finally decides to stand up and act like a prime minister of Canada and protect the rights of a Canadian citizen."
Kuebler said a new blast of publicity surrounding Khadr's case, spawned by last week's court-ordered release of intelligence information and Tuesday's jailhouse interrogation video, should prompt Harper to act.
Harper, however, has been dismissive of calls to intercede in the case.
"Mr. Khadr is accused of very serious things," the prime minister said last week. "There is a legal process in the United States. He can make his arguments in that process."
On Wednesday, Harper's director of communication, Kory Teneycke, repeated that position.
"We're not affected by what's on the cover of newspapers," he said.
Last week, U.S. intelligence information made public under Canadian court order showed Khadr was deprived of sleep and subjected to other abuse. Kuebler said the new information bothered him "greatly."
"Whatever you think about the appropriateness of those methods being employed on adult terrorists, Omar is a child - he was particularly susceptible to psychological trauma and damage," Kuebler said.
"When the Chinese and the Soviets were doing it, we didn't have any problem calling it torture."
On Tuesday, video of a then-16-year-old Khadr under interrogation by Canada's spy service in a cell at Guantanamo Bay was shown around the world.
Kuebler said anyone who watched Khadr whimpering for his mother and still believed he had vowed to die fighting with a bunch of hardened al Qaida terrorists is "crazy."
"The tape shows Omar Khadr not as a hardened terrorist but as a frightened boy," he said.
"It just shows how unreliable anything that they extracted from this kid is and would be at trial."
Sgt. Layne Morris, who was blinded in the July 2002 firefight that left Sgt. Chris Speer dead, was adamant Khadr was an incorrigible terrorist and the video of his crying should elicit no sympathy.
"He's disappointed and discouraged that he's alive and he's in the hands of coalition forces instead of in paradise with 72 virgins," Morris said from Portland, Ore.
The Utah soldier, who is expected to be a key prosecution witness, insisted Khadr be tried in the U.S. because he "committed adult crimes" against Americans.
Khadr was bent on killing as many American and Canadian soldiers as he could, Morris said.
"He waited until the troops got close enough that he could throw a hand grenade. That was the hand grenade (that) killed Chris Speer."
Kuebler called that scenario "a complete figment of his imagination," noting a wounded Morris had been taken from the immediate battle scene before Speer died.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Khadr did throw the grenade, Kuebler insisted.
"He's a child soldier and he deserves protections as a child soldier under international law."
In the absence of a request from Canada to have Khadr returned, the military lawyer predicted mounting political pressure in the U.S. on the prosecution to get a conviction before President George W. Bush leaves office in January.