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Guantanamo convict's victim recalled as a hero



Defendant Omar Khadr, a native of Toronto, Canada, listens to testimony during his commissions trial at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, in this courtroom sketch October 27, 2010. Khadr, who was 15 and gravely wounded when captured during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, admitted he conspired with al Qaeda and killed a U.S. soldier with a grenade. Khadr plead guilty in a plea deal that could send him home to serve the rest of his sentence in Canada within the year. Credit: Reuters/Janet Hamlin/Pool

By Jane Sutton
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba | Wed Oct 27, 2010 10:44pm EDT

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Six days before a young Canadian lobbed a fatal grenade at a U.S. soldier, that soldier had run into a minefield and rescued two injured Afghan children, the U.S. war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay naval base learned on Wednesday. The military jurors who will sentence Toronto native Omar Khadr heard testimony about the special forces medic Khadr admitted murdering during a firefight in Afghanistan, U.S. Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer.

"Chris risked his own life and his opportunity to go back to his children because there were two Afghan children who had been injured in an active minefield," a colleague and friend identified only as Sergeant Major Y testified. "Chris went into that active minefield and rescued those children." Speer was posthumously awarded the Soldier's Medal, which commemorates acts of heroism, he said, stopping his testimony several times to breathe deeply and hold back tears. The incident occurred on July 21, 2002, six days before Speer's unit engaged in a firefight at a compound where the then-15-year-old Khadr lived and worked with a group of al Qaeda bomb-makers.

In his guilty plea on Monday, Khadr admitted he threw the grenade that hurled shrapnel into Speer's brain, becoming the fifth prisoner convicted in the much-criticized tribunals at the Guantanamo Bay naval base and the first person since World War Two prosecuted in a war crimes tribunal for acts committed as a juvenile. Speer died 12 days later at a military hospital in Germany, a loss that fellow soldiers said devastated their unit. "The loss was absolutely catastrophic, it was immediate and it was long-lasting," said Captain E, who was once Speer's boss and later replaced him in the unit in Afghanistan.

'HEART AND SOUL'

The soldiers described Speer as a committed family man and outstanding medic, a serene and graceful man who never got rattled. "Sometimes you get an individual who just becomes the heart and soul of your unit ... that was Chris," the captain said. The special forces soldiers' names were not disclosed because they are still on active duty.

Khadr, now 24, looked down during their testimony but showed no emotion. He pleaded guilty on Monday to all five charges against him, including murdering Speer, conspiring with al Qaeda to attack civilians, and making and planting roadside bombs for use against U.S. convoys in Afghanistan. His plea agreement calls for him to serve one more year at the Guantanamo detention camp, where he has been held for eight yeas, and then return to Canada to serve the rest of his sentence.

The sentence is reportedly capped at eight years, but if the jury issues a different sentence he would serve whichever is shorter. Khadr is the son of a dead al Qaeda financier and was raised in what one sibling called "an al Qaeda family" now living in the Toronto area. Defense lawyers spent much of the day in an attempt to discredit a psychiatrist who was hired by prosecutors to assess Khadr and deemed him "highly dangerous."

The psychiatrist, Michael Welner, acknowledged he had relied in part on research by a Danish doctor. The psychologist, Nicolai Sennels, worked with young Muslim prisoners in Denmark and said the more religiously devout they were, the poorer their prognosis was for re-integration into Western society. Welner said he found some of Sennels' research useful but did not share his view that Muslims should not be allowed to immigrate to Europe, nor his view that the Koran was "a criminal book."

Sennels also wrote that massive inbreeding among Muslims had "done catastrophic damage to their gene pool" and impaired their intelligence and sanity. Welner said he did not share that view either, but that "It's my understanding that Omar Khadr is not a product of inbreeding." He said his opinion that Khadr was a risk for future violence was "not because he is devout, not because he is Muslim, but because he is a person who has a history of murder."

(Editing by Jim Marshall)

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Guantanamo convict tells soldier's widow: "I'm sorry"



A courtroom sketch shows defendant Omar Khadr (L), a native of Toronto, Canada, holding his head in his hands in front of military commission Judge Colonel Patrick Parrish at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba in this October 26, 2010 file photo. Credit: Reuters/Janet Hamlin/Pool

By Jane Sutton
GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba | Thu Oct 28, 2010 8:03pm EDT

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A Canadian Guantanamo prisoner who pleaded guilty to killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan told the man's widow on Thursday he was "really, really sorry," but she told him, "You will always be a murderer in my eyes."

The emotional testimony came during a sentencing hearing for Omar Khadr, a 24-year-old Toronto native who pleaded guilty on Monday to murder and terrorism conspiracy charges in a U.S. war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Khadr admitted throwing the grenade that killed a special forces soldier, U.S. Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer, during a 2002 firefight in which Khadr himself was shot twice in the back and blinded in one eye.

Khadr was 15 at the time. Speer's widow, Tabitha Speer, cried and rocked back and forth during her earlier testimony. She showed photos of her husband with their young daughter and baby son, now aged 11 and 8. She glared across the courtroom at Khadr, who was captured during a battle in Afghanistan.

Khadr is the first person since World War Two prosecuted in a war crimes tribunal for acts committed as a minor. A few hours later, Khadr stood in the courtroom and told her, "I'm really, really sorry for the pain I've caused you and your family and I wish I could do something that would take this pain away from you." Speer shook her head as Khadr spoke, seeming to reject his apology.

Speer told the military jury that Khadr had the choice to leave with the women and children before the firefight broke out at the al Qaeda compound where he lived, but chose instead to stay and fight U.S. forces. "Everybody wants to talk about how he's the victim, how he's the child. I don't see that," the dark-haired woman said. "He made a choice.

My children had no choice. ... (They) didn't deserve to have their father taken by someone like you." Khadr, now a 24-year-old with a full beard, bowed his head down as she testified and read letters from her children. "I think that Omar Khadr should go to jail because of the open hole he made in my family and killing my dad," 8-year-old Tanner Speer wrote. "Bad guys stink."

'CHILD SOLDIER NARRATIVE'

In a letter sent to the Guantanamo military tribunal, the U.N. special envoy for children in armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, urged tribunal members to consider sending Khadr to a controlled rehabilitation program in Canada instead of imposing a prison sentence.

"In every sense Omar represents the classic child soldier narrative: recruited by unscrupulous groups to undertake actions at the bidding of adults to fight battles they barely understand," she wrote in the letter, dated October 27.

Smiling at times, Khadr said he hoped to have a chance to experience "the wonders and beauties of life" for the first time when he was eventually released from the Guantanamo camp where he has spent eight years. He said he hoped to become a doctor someday.

Khadr pleaded guilty to all five charges against him, including conspiring with al Qaeda to attack civilians, and making and planting roadside bombs for use against U.S. convoys in Afghanistan. His plea deal calls for his repatriation to Canada in one year to serve the rest of his sentence, which is reportedly capped at eight years.

If the jury issues a different sentence he would serve whichever is shorter. The former top legal adviser at the Guantanamo detention camp, Navy Captain Patrick McCarthy, testified on Thursday he believed Khadr could be rehabilitated. He described him as a respectful young man who had a positive influence on the adult prisoners around him and often acted as an intermediary to help defuse tension in the camp.

Khadr is the son of an al Qaeda financier who took his family to Afghanistan when Omar was a boy, sent him to weapons training camp and apprenticed him to al Qaeda bomb-makers. "Fifteen-year-olds, in my opinion, should not be held to the same standard of accountability as an adult would be," McCarthy testified.

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Will Dunham)