'Shocking' That Khadr Will Face Military Commission In U.S

Omar Khadr's civilian lawyer in the United States said Friday he was disappointed to hear Washington is pressing ahead with military commission proceedings against the Canadian terror suspect.

Barry Coburn said he finds the decision "shocking." "We thought that the incoming Obama administration signalled a new day with respect to these cases - a new respect for civil liberties, an abhorrence of torture, a respect for the time-honoured legal procedures and protections that are mandated by the constitution and enforced by the federal courts, " Coburn told The Canadian Press in a telephone interview.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that the Toronto-born Khadr, the only westerner still at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is one of five who will face military commissions on U.S. soil.

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York for trial in a civilian federal court and Holder expects to seek the death penalty for them.

Holder said the detainees in the New York case will be tried in a courthouse just blocks from where the Sept. 11 attackers felled the twin towers. Coburn said he finds the decision on Khadr shocking, since President Barack Obama had said in January he would shut down Guantanamo Bay and take a look at what do with him and the other inmates of the infamous prison.

News of the move comes as the Supreme Court of Canada hears the government's appeal of a lower-court ruling in the case of Khadr, who is charged in the death in 2002 of an American soldier. Ottawa is fighting a Federal Appeal Court decision which upheld a ruling that required the government to try to repatriate the 23-year-old Khadr, who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15.

Government lawyers say Khadr's rights have not been breached under the Charter of Rights, and that every reasonable effort has been made by Ottawa to assist Khadr while in U.S. custody.

In August, the appeal court agreed with a federal court judge's decision that Khadr's rights were breached when Canadian officials interviewed him in Guantanamo in 2003 and shared the resulting information with U.S. authorities.

Source: www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jLu1GBDEufTBLrbClqlob2RodQTA