A US military tribunal has sentenced former child soldier Omar Khadr to 40 years in prison, but a plea deal means the Canadian citizen will serve up to eight years behind bars.
A seven-member military panel deliberated for almost nine hours over a two-day period before reaching their decision for Khadr, who pleaded guilty on Monday last week to throwing a grenade that killed a US sergeant in Afghanistan in 2002, when he was just 15.
The sentence announced on Sunday, however, was largely symbolic.
PHOTO: EPA
The case’s military judge, US Army Colonel Patrick Parrish, said that under a plea agreement, Khadr would serve one year at Guantanamo Bay and the rest in Canada, pending Ottawa’s approval.
Prosecuting attorney Jeffrey Groharing had requested no fewer than 25 additional years in prison.
Khadr, now 24, became the third Guantanamo detainee to plead guilty and the fifth to face court proceedings before military commissions — former US president George W. Bush-era war tribunals US President Barack Obama has reformed and reinstated.
He is the last Westerner held at Guantanamo Bay, the US naval base where 174 “war on terror” detainees remain.
“The world is watching,” Groharing told Khadr in closing arguments on Saturday. “Your sentence will send a message to al-Qaeda and others whose aims and goals are to kill and cause chaos around the world.”
Khadr, who has already spent eight years at the Guantanamo prison camp, admitted in his plea agreement to throwing the grenade that killed Sergeant Christopher Speer and told his widow that he was sorry.
He pleaded guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war, providing material assistance to a terrorist organization and espionage.
Born in Toronto on Sept. 19, 1986, Khadr was a beardless teenager when he was captured while severely wounded in Afghanistan. Today, he sports a sturdy physique, a tall man with a heavy beard and a scarred face.
Khadr’s lead lawyer, Army Lieutenant Colonel Jon Jackson, had asked the jury, which included three women, to take into account the time served at Guantanamo and sentence his client to two additional years in prison, rounding out his full punishment to 10 years.
“There is no deradicalization program in Guantanamo,” Jackson said, recalling a psychiatrist who testified that Khadr was beyond redemption and a danger to society. “Every day he has been marinated in this jihad sauce.”
Canada has denied its involvement in plea negotiations that took place in Guantanamo, but in a diplomatic note made public on Sunday, the Canadian government said it “is inclined to favorably consider Mr Khadr’s application to be transferred to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence, or such portion of the remainder of his sentence as the National Parole Board determines.”
The note also states that Khadr will be able to apply for full parole following the completion of one-third of his sentence.
In a heavily redacted affidavit, Khadr says he was treated brutally after his capture. He was taken, severely wounded, to a military camp in Bagram, Afghanistan, and later to Guantanamo in October 2002.
A video posted online in July 2008 shows him sobbing and begging for help as Canadian agents interrogated him at Guantanamo.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant
‘TERRORISM’: Israel slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, saying that he has revealed his ‘true face’ by embracing the ‘rapists and murderers of Hamas’ Hamas yesterday announced that it had signed an agreement in Beijing with other Palestinian organizations, including Fatah, to work together for “national unity,” with China describing it as a deal to rule Gaza together once the war ends. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), who hosted senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzuk, Fatah envoy Mahmud al-Aloul and emissaries from 12 other Palestinian groups, said they had agreed to set up an “interim national reconciliation government” to govern post-war Gaza. “Today we sign an agreement for national unity and we say that the path to completing this journey is national
Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge would soon help India entrench control of disputed Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the restive Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. However, its completion has sparked concern among some in a territory with a long history of opposing Indian rule, already home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits