Obama's Guantánamo challenge: a boy soldier's trial

[babylonsister]

Obama's Guantánamo challenge: a boy soldier's trial

* Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
* The Guardian, Wednesday 14 January 2009


Barack Obama has seven days after he enters the White House before the looming war crimes trial of a former child soldier will force the new president to demonstrate his resolve to swiftly shut the Guantánamo Bay detention camp.

Omar Khadr is among the handful of 240 or so detainees whose face and story are widely known. The Canadian was 15 when he was held in Afghanistan six years ago. Footage of Khadr weeping under interrogation and calling for his mother caused a sensation when it emerged last summer. To allow his trial to go ahead on 26 January would be seen as endorsing the prosecution of a child soldier and the Bush administration's discredited system of military tribunals, human rights organisations said.

"I cannot believe that the Obama administration really wants its legacy to be that the first thing it did was put on trial a child soldier," said Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler, Khadr's military lawyer.

Halting the military tribunals would be the first concrete action dismantling the legal regime put in place by President Bush that allowed the rendition, torture and indefinite detention of al-Qaida suspects.

"The proceedings that are going on will be stopped in their tracks," said Scott Horton, a law professor who has written extensively about the detention camp at the US naval base in Cuba. "You are going to see an order to stand down on the military commissions." Obama aides said on Monday that he intends to issue an executive order closing the camp, possibly on his first day as president. But the aides gave no timeline and Obama has ruled out a closure in his first 100 days. The president-elect's admission to ABC television, with its striking similarities to statements from Bush administration officials, is troubling human rights organisations. So is the lack of detail in leaks by aides to the Associated Press. Bush has been saying since 2006 that he would like to close Guantánamo.

more...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/14/barack-obama-guantanamo-human-rights

[Thrill]

1. Isakoff already said Obama plans to halt the tribunals

it was reported on Rachel's show last nigbt.

[babylonsister]

2. I didn't watch Rachel last night, and don't

much trust Isikoff. I hope everyone is right.

[Thrill]

3. He said he got it from a high-level aide

http://www.newsweek.com/id/178856