US President Barack
Obama's revamped military commissions start work Monday at the US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, focusing on the cases of two men facing terrorism charges.
One has pleaded guilty and the other was 15 at
the time of his arrest.
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, 50, pleaded
guilty last month to conspiring to provide material support to
terrorism. The former bodyguard of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden will
appear before a commission on Monday to hear his sentence.
A spokesman for the prosecution, David Iglesias, refused to tell reporters
if Qosi's sentence will be made public or remain confidential.
Asked if convicted Guantanamo prisoners would be kept at the prison even
after their sentences had run out, as happened under former US president
George W. Bush, Iglesias said he was "not aware of any controlling
direction from Washington, DC, on that."
Also Monday, in a second courtroom at the naval base, Omar Khadr, a Canadian captured at age 15 by US troops in Afghanistan and the last Westerner at the naval base,
will appear at the last preliminary hearing before his trial, due to
start on Tuesday.
The trial will begin with the selection of a
15-member jury, at least five of whom will be military officers.
Khadr,
now 23, is accused of throwing a grenade in 2002 that killed a US
soldier. He also is alleged to have been trained by Al-Qaeda and joined a
network organized by Osama bin Laden to make bombs.
"It's very
clear that the government of the US and the government of Canada have
decided not to intervene in this case and therefore we are going to see
the first case of a child soldier in modern history," said his military
lawyer Jon Jackson.
"When President Obama was elected, I believed
that we were going to close the book on Guantanamo and the military
commissions. And instead President Obama has decided to write the next
sad, pathetic chapter in the book of the military commissions," he
added.
"Forever, Obama's military commission will be remembered as
the trial of a child soldier," Jackson said.
Iglesias had a different view on Khadr's case.
"There is no legal prohibition in
the US to try underage" people, he said, adding that the prosecution
would have no trouble asking that he be put away for life if he is found
guilty of the charges.
In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's
government has not requested the return of Khadr, preferring to allow
the US trial to run its course.
Khadr has so far refused a plea
deal. In a letter to his Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney, published in
newspapers in Canada and the United States, Khadr said the trial may
show the world how unfair the process is.
"The world doesn't get
it, so it might work if the world sees the US sentencing a child to life
in prison, it might show the world how unfair and sham this process
is," he said.
Since 2001, four men have been convicted of
terrorism-related charges in Guantanamo military trials, two of whom
pleaded guilty, while US federal courts have sentenced some 200
extremists over the same period.
The first, so-called "Australian
Taliban" David Hicks, pleaded guilty in May 2007 to material support for
terrorism in exchange for a reduced sentence of nine months in prison
to be served in his native Australia.
On Friday, the US Supreme Court declined to block Khadr's prosecution at Guantanamo.
Jackson had sought the injunction in order to force a lower court to examine
the constitutionality of the military tribunal set to try the Canadian.
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