WASHINGTON (AFP) — Lawyers for a Canadian held as a suspected terrorist by the United States called Monday for the charges to be dropped, arguing a military court could not try him since he was recruited as a child.
"A juvenile illegally used in combat by Al-Qaeda does not have the requisite military status that has been historically necessary for military jurisdiction to be exercised," said briefing papers released by the lawyers.
Omar Khadr was 15 when he was seized in Afghanistan in 2002 and taken to the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of the drive to round up extremists in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Now 22, he is accused of killing a US soldier with a hand grenade as he was being arrested for making explosives, with links to the Al-Qaeda extremist network.
The suspected "enemy combatants" held in the enclave in southern Cuba are tried not in regular US courts, but special military tribunals.
Khadr's lawyers have called on the judge of the tribunal handling his case, Peter Brownback, to annul the charges. They say that the 2006 law that established the tribunals did not authorize them to try minors.
"If jurisdiction is exercised over Mr Khadr, the military judge will be the first in western history to preside over the trial of alleged war crimes committed by a child," the lawyers said in their briefing.
Canadian parliamentarians and law experts have supported the arguments of Khadr's lawyers.
"The international community has focused its efforts on prosecuting those individuals responsible for recruiting children as soldiers, and not the child soldiers themselves," wrote French expert Robert Badinter in a briefing submitted along with the appeal.
"The crimes committed by these children are the direct consequence of their illegal recruitment, and often the product of physical and psychological treatment which diminishes their ability to judge right and wrong."
A hearing is due at the Guantanamo naval base on February 4 to rule on the appeal, the lawyers said.
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