Monday, October 25, 2010

Good news for Obama! Obama gets off!

NYTimes :
The deal to avert a trial of Mr. Khadr represents a breakthrough for the Obama administration’s legal team, which had been dismayed that his case was to become the inaugural run of a new-look military commissions system — undermining their efforts to rebrand the tribunals in the eyes of the world as a fair and just forum for prosecuting terrorism suspects.
despite that bit about rewriting the rules as they went.

LATimes :

The Obama administration will be spared putting Canadian terrorism suspect Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner, on trial in relation to a firefight in Afghanistan when he was 15 and apprenticed to militant fighters.

A young Canadian terrorism suspect accepted a plea deal Monday that will make him eligible to leave Guantanamo Bay prison in a year, sparing the Obama administration the spectacle of putting the first child soldier on trial for war crimes in modern times.


So we're all good then, are we? The main thing is - Obama got off.

Question : If, as an apparently extra-judicial person, you have to plead guilty under duress to get out of a court not recognized as such anywhere in the world but Canada and the US, a court whose entire reason for existing is to be beyond the rule of established civil and military law, does it still count?

Fun fact : The only two counties left not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are Somalia and the United States.
Canada has ratified it but we thought it was called the UN Convention on the Rights of Children We Like.
.

2 comments:

West End Bob said...

Not a speck of "justice" in this example of a "trial." "Travesty" a more appropriate definition.

'Nuther display of total US crapola with Canadian assistance, but hey: "Obama got off," so it's all good . . . .

Beijing York said...

Alison, this article provides a very comprehensive look at all the politics behind the Khadr case:

http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/10/

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