Coming of age in a Guantanamo Bay jail cell

When Omar Khadr appeared at his hearing at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on June 4, 2007, he was five years older and eight inches taller than when he was captured on July 27, 2002, after a bloody firefight near the Pakistani border in Afghanistan.

Khadr, the child of Egyptian and Palestinian parents in a fundamentalist Muslim family in Toronto, was only 15 when he was taken into custody and transported to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo.

He was to have been arraigned on June 4 on five war-crime charges, including murder, spying and providing material support for terrorism. But in a surprise move, the military judge overseeing the special tribunal threw out the charges on a technicality, leaving Khadr's fate in limbo.

The issue for the judge was that Khadr was classified as an "enemy combatant" whereas the special military tribunals were designed to deal with "unlawful enemy combatants," a distinction that likely means his case will be put off to another jurisdiction.

If Khadr eventually does go to trial and is convicted he faces a long fixed term in a federal prison — perhaps in the U.S., perhaps in Canada. But even if acquitted he could be facing an indefinite, perhaps longer term locked up because the U.S. has classified him as an enemy combatant in what is an open-ended war on terror.

The Bush administration’s attempt to create an alternative justice system for terrorism suspects, in the works for more than five years, has yet to complete a single trial.

After an earlier version of the system was rejected by the Supreme Court last year, the administration and Congress went back to the drawing board. The result was the Military Commissions Act, which was meant to settle a host of difficult questions once and for all.

But the system took two more blows yesterday, when, in separate proceedings, military judges dismissed charges against prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on the ground that the administration had not managed to comply with the new law it pushed through Congress just last fall.

Eugene R. Fidell, a military law expert in Washington, said the development was but the latest in a long series of missteps.

“This system, which the administration has had more than ample opportunity to get up and running properly,” Mr. Fidell said, “is continuing to bounce down the tracks.”

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - The White House on Tuesday said it disagreed with rulings by U.S. military judges to drop all war crimes charges against two Guantanamo prisoners facing trial, and that the Defense Department was considering whether to appeal.

“We don’t agree with the ruling on the military commissions,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto told reporters in Prague where President Bush is meeting with leaders of the Czech Republic.

Omar Khadr was imprisoned five years ago when he was 15 years old. He was captured after a firefight in Afghanistan and was accused of throwing the grenade that killed Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, an American medic.

U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Layne Morris lost his right eye in that same battle and he joined us by phone from Salt Lake City, Utah.

The ruling in Omar Khadr's case is likely to have implications far beyond what happens to Omar Khadr, from the fate of the nearly 400 other prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, to the way the Bush Administration prosecutes the war on terror.

The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City has taken an active interest in all of these issues. It's also represented other prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Shayana Kadidal is the Managing Attorney for the Center's Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative and he is in New York City.

How much longer must Omar Khadr, a young Canadian citizen, be caught up in the judicial farce that U.S. President George Bush created to deal with "enemy combatants" after the 9/11 attacks?

American prosecutors have had five years to put Khadr on trial for murder for throwing a grenade that killed U.S. Army medic Sgt. Christopher Speer in Afghanistan in 2002. At the time, Khadr was a 15-year-old Al Qaeda "child terrorist," prosecutors allege.

Twice, Khadr has been charged. Twice, the charges have been stayed.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the original "military commission" process Washington created to try Guantanamo detainees was unconstitutional, quashing the first set of charges.

And yesterday Col. Peter Brownback, presiding over Khadr's case, threw into chaos Washington's bid to get the commissions up and running again. He dismissed the reinstated charges against Khadr on a technicality. Brownback ruled, correctly, that the U.S. Congress empowered the commissions to try only "unlawful enemy combatants." But U.S. officials never did designate Khadr and 380 other detainees as "unlawful" combatants; they merely called them "enemy combatants." Strictly speaking, the commissions have no right to try them. That leaves U.S. prosecutors scrambling to get them redesignated.

This is legal anarchy. Washington appears determined to rewrite the rules until it manages to secure a conviction.

advocates and lawmakers in Congress said it was time to restore the rights of the prisoners to challenge their detention in U.S. courts, which Congress revoked last year.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the White House to work with the Democratic-controlled Congress to craft a new legal framework for the tribunals.

"The place to start is by restoring the hallmark of justice known as the great writ of habeas corpus," Leahy said.