Trial Set For After Elections

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Miami Herald
September 17, 2008
By Carol Rosenberg
The Pentagon on Tuesday announced a Nov. 10 trial date for alleged Canadian teen terrorist Omar Khadr, meaning the terror murder trial will follow both the U.S. and Canadian elections and could straddle Thanksgiving.
Khadr, 21, is accused at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, war court of throwing a grenade in a July 2002 firefight near Khost, Afghanistan, that killed a U.S. commando. American forces were assaulting a suspected al Qaeda compound. Conviction could carry a life sentence.
His trial had earlier been set to open Oct. 8. But prosecutors and defense attorneys have yet to work out access to some proposed trial evidence and whether the government will permit a private mental health examination of Khadr.
Now, according to the war court calendar, the next alleged terrorist to face trial is Ali Hamza al Bahlul, 39, of Yemen, who allegedly was Osama bin Laden's media secretary. The Yemeni is accused of supporting terror as bin Laden's media secretary and sometime bodyguard. He allegedly produced al Qaeda ''propaganda products,'' notably pre-9/11 recruiting films.
His tribunal is set to begin Oct. 27. Bahlul said at a hearing last month he wants to boycott the trial and be brought from his cell only for verdict and potential sentencing.
Khadr is the Toronto-born scion of a radical Muslim family. He was 15 years old during the firefight in Afghanistan.
Prosecutors have predicted a two- to three-week trial for Khadr with five to eight days of government witnesses likely to include U.S. forces who were at the firefight and U.S. agents who interrogated the teen.
Across months of pretrial hearings his Pentagon lawyers have telegraphed a defense that could alternately argue he did not throw the grenade from inside a suspect al Qaeda compound, or that he was a child soldier at the time and not responsible.
 
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