Canadian-born child soldier and torture victim Omar Khadr, the only citizen of a western democracy still held in the US Government detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, went on trial this week in the first war crimes prosecution of a child soldier in US history. Under Stephen Harper, Canada is the only western country not to ask for the release of its nationals from the illegal prison camp. The Harper government has flouted court orders requiring it to take action in support of Khadr's civil rights. The U.N. Special Representative on Children in Armed Conflict warned Monday that the legality of Khadr's...

12 August, 2010

Salon's Glenn Greenwald notes the lead paragraph in a New York Times story Saturday: WASHINGTON — The 48 Guantánamo Bay detainees whom the Obama administration has decided to keep holding without trial include several for whom there is no evidence of involvement in any specific terrorist plot, according to a report disclosed Friday. The report itself concludes that "for many detainees at Guantanamo, prosecution is not feasible in either federal court or a military commission."  Greenwald comments: They can't even be prosecuted in the due-process-abridging military commissions we invented out of whole cloth for those who can't be convicted in a real court.  In...

30 May, 2010