Prosecutors: Young Canadian comforted himself at Gitmo by thinking about killing US soldier

Prosecutors: Gitmo inmate took pride in slaying

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — A Canadian former child soldier told jailers he comforted himself in his first days at Guantanamo by thinking about killing an American soldier, military prosecutors said Thursday in opening arguments at the war-crimes trial of the youngest inmate at the detention center.

Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured in 2002, is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a Delta Force medic after a firefight in Afghanistan.

“Omar Khadr is a terrorist, trained by al-Qaida to murder Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer,” prosecutor Jeff Groharing told a jury of U.S. military officers inside a hilltop courthouse at this U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

“He said when he first arrived at Guantanamo, thinking about killing an American would make him feel better,” Groharing said.

“When asked what he was most proud of in his life, he said conducting the operations against the Americans.”

Khadr denies throwing the grenade, and his lawyers argued that his purported confessions were extracted through mistreatment, including threats of rape.

In his opening statement, Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, a Pentagon-appointed defense attorney, said the teen was at the al-Qaida compound at the time of the firefight because he was sent there by his father, an alleged terrorist financier with close ties to Osama bin Laden.

“He was there because his father told him to go there,” Jackson said. “He was there because Ahmed Khadr hated his enemies more than he loved his son.”

Khadr has pleaded not guilty to five charges including murder, spying and supporting terrorism. He faces a maximum life sentence at a trial expected to last roughly three or four weeks.

The case has been delayed for years by legal wrangling and a series of challenges to the system of war-crimes trials, known as military commissions, that was set up during the Bush administration and has been criticized by human rights groups for not including the same protections as federal courts or traditional court-martials.

The Supreme Court struck down one version of the trials in 2006, but the government and Congress brought them back with new rules. Obama overhauled the system upon taking office to offer more protections to defendants, and is considering using it to prosecute more prominent suspects such as alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Khadr’s trial centers on the July 27, 2002, battle at a mud-walled al-Qaida compound in eastern Afghanistan. Prosecutors introduced a model of the site and pointed out the corner from which Khadr allegedly lobbed the grenade as a Special Forces team entered following a nearly four-hour firefight.

The grenade exploded at the feet of Speer, a 28-year-old father of two from Albuquerque, New Mexico. His widow, Tabitha Speer, watched the proceedings inside the courtroom but was not expected to testify until a possible sentencing hearing.

Khadr himself was shot twice during the battle and lost vision in one eye from a shrapnel injury.

The bearded Canadian detainee, now 23, appeared in a suit and tie in the same courtroom where he first appeared in 2006.

The jury panel of seven U.S. military officers — four men and three women — was seated Wednesday from a pool of 15. Prosecutors lost an argument to dismiss a U.S. Navy captain who said he believes Guantanamo is a “kinder, gentler” place than when Khadr was taken here in 2002, and used their only automatic dismissal to eliminate a potential juror who said Guantanamo should be closed.

Child advocates including Radhika Coomaraswamy, a U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict, have warned that prosecuting a minor for war crimes could set a dangerous international precedent and lead to more youths being victimized by war.

Where other Western countries have successfully lobbied for the return of their nationals from Guantanamo, Ottawa has repeatedly refused to intervene despite a recent Canadian Supreme Court ruling that ordered it to protect Khadr’s rights.

The defendant’s father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was an Egyptian-born Canadian citizen killed in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter shelled the house where he was staying with senior al-Qaida operatives.