The Guantanamo tribunal system is preparing today for its first trial under President Barack Obama.
The system that halted after Mr Obama took office is resuming at the US Navy base in Cuba for the proceedings, to be held in two courtrooms.
The Pentagon is holding military commission sessions this week for two detainees: a young Canadian going on trial over the death of a US soldier in Afghanistan and an aide to Osama bin Laden who is to be sentenced after pleading guilty in a deal with prosecutors.
Mr Obama has introduced some changes designed to extend more legal protections to detainees, but the tribunals’ long-term future remains unclear as the president struggles to fulfil a pledge to close the prison altogether.
The trial of Omar Khadr, the Toronto-born son of an alleged al-Qaeda financier, is expected to begin tomorrow, following pre-trial hearings.
It is to be the first trial under Mr Obama and only the third at Guantanamo, where the system that former US president George Bush established for prosecuting terror suspects after the September 11th, 2001, attacks has faced repeated legal setbacks and challenges.
Khadr is accused of lobbing a grenade that killed Sgt 1st Class Christopher Speer of Albuquerque, New Mexico, during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. He faces a maximum life sentence if convicted of charges including murder, conspiracy and spying.
His lawyers deny he threw the grenade and argue that Khadr, the last Westerner at Guantanamo, deserves leniency because he was only 15 when he was captured. They say the prosecution case rests on confessions extracted following abuse that included sleep deprivation and threats of rape.
“President Obama has decided to write the next sad, pathetic chapter in the book of military commissions and unfortunately the president is starting the military commissions with the case of a child solder,” army Lt Col Jon Jackson, Khadr’s lawyer, said.
Khadr said in a May letter to one of his Canadian lawyers, Dennis Edney, that he was resigned to a harsh sentence from a system that he called unfair. “It might work if the world sees the US sentencing a child to life in prison, it might show the world how unfair and sham this process is,” Khadr wrote.
A spokesman for the military commissions prosecutors said the defendant’s age might be considered at sentencing if Khadr was convicted but had no legal bearing on his prosecution.
The US Supreme Court last week rejected a last-ditch request to halt the trial on grounds the system was unconstitutional.
In the other case, a military panel will begin deliberations as early as today on a sentence for Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, a Sudanese detainee who pleaded guilty last month to one count each of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.
Al-Qosi (50) was accused of acting as accountant, paymaster, supply chief and cook for al-Qaeda during the 1990s when the terrorist network was centred in Sudan and Afghanistan. He allegedly worked later as a bodyguard for bin Laden.
He had faced a potential life sentence if convicted at trial. Terms of the plea deal, including any limits on his sentence, have not been disclosed.
Both detainees have been held at Guantanamo since 2002.
AP