A Guantánamo detainee who was 15 when he was captured, pleads guilty to five charges, including murder. The plea allows US prosecutors to avoid a trial, and offers the 'child soldier' an endpoint for his incarceration.
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The entrance to Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay is seen on Oct. 24. Canadian Omar Khadr, who has been in US custody since he was a teenager, could see an end to eight years of legal limbo on Monday as his war crimes trial resumes amid talk of a possible last-minute plea deal to spare him a life sentence.
Monday’s guilty plea at the Guantánamo trial of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr offers a bargain for both sides in the controversial case of a 15-year-old caught up in a war between the US military and Al-Qaeda.
For Khadr, the plea deal establishes an endpoint, as yet unspecified, to his open-ended imprisonment at Guantánamo.
For the government, it provides guilty verdicts on each of five charges – from murder to conspiracy to engage in terrorism – without having to face the uncertainty and potential criticism of a military commission process that is yet to be thoroughly tested.
“What the government gets is closure on a case that was not a slam dunk for them,” says Fordham Law Professor James Cohen, a former federal prosecutor who represents two detainees at Guantánamo.
The Khadr plea brings to five the number of Guantánamo detainees who have been convicted or pleaded guilty under the special military commission process.
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