US News
Guantanamo detainee tries to dismiss lawyers as hearings resume
Jun 1, 2009, 23:12 GMT
Washington - As the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, resumed for the first time under the Obama administration Monday, a Canadian detainee sought to dismiss his team of lawyers amid an ensuing row over who would defend him.
The detainee in question was Omar Khadr, 22, a Canadian citizen accused of killing a US soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. Khadr was just 15 years old at the time.
Hours after taking office in January, President Barack Obama ordered prosecutors to seek delays in all of the proceedings at Guantanamo so his administration could review the cases and explore the best way for moving forward. The cases were frozen for 120 days.
In January, a US military judge suspended the proceedings against Khadr, a so-called 'child soldier' suspected of using a hand grenade to kill the American soldier.
Monday's hearings was beset by arguments over who would defend Khadr. 'Right now, nobody,' Khadr told the judge, when asked who on his team of Pentagon-appointed lawyers should speak for him.
'I can't trust these (American) lawyers. They've been accusing each other for the past four months, and fighting in front of me,' the Miami Herald quoted Khadr as saying, as he asked for all of them to be dismissed.
'I'm going to ask my Canadian lawyers to choose someone to represent me who I can trust,' he said. The judge has given him until July 13 to consult his family's lawyers in Canada.
Obama has stated he intends to close Guantanamo, where about 245 prisoners remain locked up and only 22 have been charged with crimes, by 2010.
But the closure poses complicated problems, including the question of which other countries will take in the prisoners as resistance grows inside the US against having them in local prisons or communities.
Omar Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was an alleged al-Qaeda financier and close friend of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. He took his three sons to Afghanistan, apparently to suport al-Qaeda, and was killed in fighting with Pakistani security forces in 2003.
Khadr's one brother, Abdullah Abdurahman, was injured in the same fighting but was eventually transferred to Canada, where he awaits extradition to the United States to face multiple terrorism charges.
His other, middle brother, Abdurahman Khadr, was also a prisoner at Guantanamo, but was later freed and is the only one to have publicly denounced jihad.
Under former president George W Bush, the prison at the US naval base in a remote location of Cuba was established for holding detainees in the war on terrorism, but the facility was quickly the subject of accusations of abusive interrogation tactics or even torture. Up to 800 prisoners were processed at Guantanamo, and many have returned to their native or third countries.
Guantanamo became a symbol of excess in Bush's war on terrorism and damaged US credibility in the world. It also became a source of tension between the United States and European Union.
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Older Talkback
page: 1
I does,thank you for admitting you were wrong .
had any brain cell that wasn't befuddled by drug abuse, he could plainly see where he is wrong.
..just once, throw off being the incredible pussy you are and give us some of that razor-sharp insight of yours. Certainly, you can try just once! There must be at least a scintilla of thought devoid of an insult in there. Impress us....show those two 300 lb mommies of yours you do not need to be traded down for a new pet chimp.
this: 'There must be at least a scintilla of thought devoid of an insult in there.'
Immediately after, he says this: 'Impress us....show those two 300 lb mommies of yours you do not need to be traded down for a new pet chimp.'
Why should I waste intelligence on monkey boy #1? The idiot is too stoned to see the painfully obvious contradictions in his actions.
'Us,' SP? 'Us'? Are you talking about that worm farm between your ears? The one with multiple poisonalities?
Drop your pants, SP, and grab your ankles. Your family dog, your real pappa, needs some lovin'.
EssPee, you are just so simple, so danged easy, so gosh-darned stupid. You always provide the ammunition that proves you to be the fool you really are.
No wonder no one takes you seriously. You're a bloody toke, joke, I mean.
My good ol buddy Sp always says it best, and he is never wrong, but I will give it a try. These so-called detainees don't need no legal representation, they need to to be shot. The only good enemy is a dead enemy. Anyone at Gitmo is enemy, plain and simple, no questions need be asked. I won't say releasing hundreds of detainee enemy was wrong, because our compassionate conservative ex-pres [the patriotic hero who saved the country] did it, so it must have been the right thing to do.
However, the current pres, when he isn't bowing to mecca, and appeasing enemy, should just get up the guts to get rid of whatever enemy is left in Gitmo. Then we should shoot all the rest of the enemy in Iraq, mother of all evil, and home of baracki osama bin laden.
And, it don't make me wrong to say it.
...you all rrrrrrreally stood up to the challenge. What did you do...empty the short bus for those incisive comments?
the only short thing around here is you - short on brains. For god's sake, EssPee, let the family dog finish his brain transfer by way of your left ear.
....show us someof your magic here. Lay down a single argument.....just one...certainly you can stop looking at the gay porn for one moment and concentrate on somethng else...
put down the doobie, open your closet door, where you live, let the smoke out and some sunshine in. When are you going to lay down a cogent post, monkey boy #1?
give omar khadr back to canada.
page: 1
SP4: Kinda says it all...Jun 1st, 2009 - 23:42:55
..doesn't it?
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