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Canadian Khadr pleads guilty in Guantanamo trial

25 October 2010 17:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Canadian captive Omar Khadr pleaded guilty on Monday to all five terrorism charges against him in the U.S. war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in a deal that could send him home to serve the rest of his sentence in a year, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
Khadr, who was captured in Afghanistan at age 15 and is now 24, admitted he conspired with al Qaeda and killed a U.S. soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan.
Terms of the Toronto native’s plea deal were not immediately disclosed, but lawyers had reportedly discussed an eight-year cap on his total sentence.
The United States agreed to support Khadr’s request to return to Canada in one year to serve the rest of his sentence there, Khadr’s lawyers told the court.
They said U.S. and Canadian officials had exchanged diplomatic notes but that his return would ultimately be up to the Canadian government.
A jury of seven U.S. military officers will gather in the court on Tuesday to hear testimony about the impact of Khadr’s actions and then impose a sentence. If their sentence differs from that in the plea agreement, Khadr will serve whichever is shorter.
Before accepting the plea, the judge questioned Khadr to ensure the defendant understood he was waiving his right to appeal.
The plea deal ends a widely criticized trial that made the United States the first nation since World War Two to prosecute someone in a war crimes tribunal for acts allegedly committed as a juvenile.
Khadr could have faced life in prison if convicted on all counts during the trial.
He wore a dark gray suit and neatly trimmed beard for his hearing in the hilltop courtroom that he first entered four and a half years ago as a pimple-faced teenager.
Seated at a table beside his U.S. military lawyers and his Canadian attorney, Khadr looked down and held his head in his hands. He answered "yes," over and over, admitting his guilt as the judge, Army Colonel Patrick Parrish, went over each of the charges.
Khadr admitted he threw the grenade that killed U.S. Army Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer during a firefight at an al Qaeda compound near the Afghan city of Khost in 2002.
He also acknowledged the court’s jurisdiction to try him, admitted he conspired with al Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks, and acknowledged making and planting roadside bombs targeting U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Khadr is the second man to plead guilty in the tribunal during the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, whose efforts to close the detention camp have been blocked by Congress. He is the fifth captive convicted since the United States established the tribunals to try foreign captives on terrorism charges after the September 11 attacks in 2001.