The jury has been selected, and the trial begins this morning: the first prosecution of a Guantanamo detainee since Obama instituted his new, improved, Supreme Court-compliant military-commission system. Not at all like Bush's, except for every important detail.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/and-then-there-were-7-the-jury-who-will-decide-omar-khadrs-fate/article1669446/

The trial is unique in other ways as well: the defendant, Omar Khadr, is the youngest "enemy combatant" in U.S. custody, he's also the only citizen of a western country still being held there, and a solid majority of Canadians -- including a former federal minister of justice -- think he should be repatriated to this country and, in fact, set free.

The Pentagon won't hear of it, because a U.S. soldier was killed during the four-hour firefight that ended with Khadr's capture. Khadr, who was 15 at the time, is charged with his murder. The White House, on the other hand, seems sensitive to the optics of making Khadr the poster boy for Gitmo defendants. A few months back, sources within the White House leaked to the media that they would seriously consider repatriating Khadr -- but their hands were tied until Canada requested his repatriation. Hint, hint, Mr. Harper.

That is something Stephen Harper's right-wing government adamantly refuses to do. Presumably -- playing to their base -- they don't want to be seen as soft on terrorism. Truly bizarre, since two-thirds of Canadians tell pollsters they want Khadr released, and the courts have consistently ruled that the government violated his rights by disregarding his claims of torture and instead interrogating him on behalf of his captors. Right now, the government is openly defying a Supreme Court order to correct that breach of his rights.

Thanks to the Harper government's obstinacy, Khadr's trial is now under way. Given that the military judge has ruled his confessions obtained under duress are admissible, the outcome is more or less pre-ordained. But a case like this would never even proceed to trial in the civilian justice system:

1. As a 15-year-old, Khadr was clearly a "child soldier" -- a class of combatants that Canada and the U.S. led the way in writing protections for into international law. Exploited by adults, they are as much victims as their own victims are, the protocol asserts.

2. Khadr's various "confessions" came after he was a) physically tortured, b) told he would be sent off to prison to be raped and murdered if he didn't co-operate. One of his interrogators was later jailed for abusing another detainee who ended up dead.

3. The evidence that Khadr committed the most serious act he is accused of -- tossing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier -- is totally circumstantial and, in fact, contradicted by some eyewitnesses. The Pentagon refuses to consider that he may have been killed by friendly fire.

4. Finally, what Khadr is accused of doing is not even remotely a crime. The group he was with exchanged gunfire and grenades with a U.S. patrol, and the house they were in was bombed from the air. People were killed on both sides. It was a military engagement -- WAR. The idea that any act, no matter how deadly, during an ongoing firefight can somehow constitute murder defies logic. Khadr's govt,-appointed military lawyers have never stressed this, relying instead on the child-soldier, torture, and unreliable-evidence defences. But to me, it's the clincher. You simply can't go into a foreign country, try to kill people, and assert that they have no legal or moral right to try to kill you back! Seems to me that is one of the fundamental rights all men are endowed with by their creator, no?

None of what I say in this blog, of course, is going to help Omar Khadr avoid the travesty of justice that's about to unfold. He was, incidentally, offered a plea bargain that would see him him serve five years (on top of the seven or eight he's already been held for). He turned it down, because it required him to stipulate that he committed the deed he's accused of. Instead, he chose to face a potential death sentence. Personally, I find this kind of principled stand surprisingly encouraging in someone whose social development stopped in his early teens.

I did title this Portrait of the Terrorist as a Young Man, and haven't really delivered much in the way of personal biography. That's partly because this guy really has no biography of his own. He was born in Toronto. His father, a jihadi and top-level Al-Qa'ida financier, took him to Pakistan/Afghanistan when he was 9. He grew up playing with the kids of Osama Bin Laden. At 14, his father left him with a militant group that taught him to make roadside IEDs -- the group he was with when captured. The rest of his life (he's 23 now) he's been a prisoner at Gitmo.

His father died in a clash with Pakistani forces a little after Khadr's capture, but his mother and three siblings returned to Canada, where his mother is an outspoken advocate for jihad. If Khadr ever does walk free, I could see the rationale for a court limiting contact with his toxic immediate family. But that's if he ever does walk free. Not an imminent prospect.

(In passing, the Wikipedia article on Khadr is surprisingly even-handed. The former justice minister I mentioned is Irwin Cotler. He's no apologist for jihad, but he's pretty well convinced that Khadr is being railroaded. Senator Romeo Dallaire, who as a general leading UN forces tried unsuccessfully to halt the Rwandan genocide, is also aghast that the Khadr trial is proceeding.)