After defense lawyers tried to counter testimony that Khadr is a dangerous radical who should remain locked up, a letter was released from the UN’s special representative for children and armed conflict describing him as a victim who deserves rehabilitation rather than punishment. – Reuters Photo

US NAVAL BASE AT GUANTANAMO BAY: A UN official called Thursday for Omar Khadr to be spared more time behind bars as a US military panel mulled a sentence for the Canadian ex-child soldier who killed a US sergeant in Afghanistan.

After defense lawyers tried to counter testimony that Khadr is a dangerous radical who should remain locked up, a letter was released from the UN’s special representative for children and armed conflict describing him as a victim who deserves rehabilitation rather than punishment.

Khadr “represents the classic child soldier narrative; recruited by unscrupulous groups to undertake actions at the bidding of adults to fight battles they barely understand,”

Radhika Coomaraswamy said in a letter to the US Military Commission in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Khadr should be sent back to a “controlled rehabilitation program” in Canada worked out by psychologists and other specialists, the UN official added.

Now age 24, Khadr was captured by US forces in Afghanistan in July 2002 when he was 15 years old.

After years of declaring his innocence, he finally admitted in a Monday plea deal to killing a US soldier with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan, conspiring with Al-Qaeda and building roadside bombs.

Under the deal, he reportedly would be given an eight-year prison term, the final seven of which would be served in Canada.

A seven-member military jury is hearing testimony in Guantanamo to recommend a sentence against Khadr which will only have force if it is less severe than the terms of the plea deal.

The plea deal sentence reportedly does not include the eight years Khadr has already spent behind bars at the controversial US naval base where 174 “war on terror” detainees remain.

Coomaraswamy urged the US military panel “to consider international practice — practice supported by the US government – that Omar Khadr not be subject to further incarceration.”

The “cardinal principle” of international practice is that child soldiers should not be prosecuted, the letter said.
Khadr was born in Canada, and his father, an Al-Qaeda operative who was killed in 2003, took him to Afghanistan.

On Thursday, a US Navy captain who worked at Guantanamo told the sentencing hearing that Khadr showed strong potential for turning his life around and that he had not seemed radicalized like other detainees here.

“I believe that his age, his lack of experience, the fact that his father took him to Afghanistan leads me to believe he has rehabilitative potential,”defense witness Captain Patrick McCarthy, a staff judge advocate at Guantanamo between 2006 and 2008, told the hearing via video link from Afghanistan.

McCarthy described Khadr as having a “positive influence” at the camp and “was able to defuse tensions.”

He said other detainees “were radical, fanatical, they would threaten us, would throw feces” at guards.

Khadr, was different, he said. “He was always very respectful, he was friendly, he was always cheerful.”

On Wednesday Khadr’s lawyer dismissed a negative evaluation of his client by a Pentagon psychiatrist who said the detainee had a high risk of returning to terrorist activities because, for the eight years he was in custody, he “marinated in a radical environment” and had become more devout.

A Pentagon report in early 2009 estimated that 14 percent of former Guantanamo detainees freed from the prison have resumed terrorist activities.

Military judge Patrick Parish expects to conclude the sentencing hearing at the end of the week. — AFP