Trial of 'child soldier' opens at Guantanamo

Omar Khadr was only 15 when he was captured by U.S. forces in 2002 in Afghanistan. Now, eight years later, the 23-year-old is on trial in Guantanamo Bay, in the first military commission trial since the beginning of the Barack Obama administration. The Pentagon-appointed defence attorney, Lt. Colonel Jon Jackson, has called the case "the first one against a child soldier in history". Khadr, a Canadian citizen, is accused of throwing a hand grenade and killing a U.S. Special Forces soldier during a U.S. bombardment of an al Qaeda compound in the eastern Afghan city of Khost. Ahmed Khadr, Omar's father, was an Egyptian-born Canadian citizen who was linked to senior levels of bin Laden's al Qaeda network in the 1980s. In 1993, he moved his family to Afghanistan from where he allegedly sent money to al Qaeda. The U.N. Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, told IPS that "The U.N. has advocated repeatedly that no child, abused in war time as a child soldier or porter or war wife, should be held personally responsible for the acts and orders of their commanders." She also urged the two countries, which are both parties to the Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict, "to allow for Omar's reintegration into society through rehabilitation programmes", adding that to her knowledge "much has been done to prepare such programmes in Canada".