Child Soldier Omar Khadr Has Lord of the Rings Script Taken Away at Guantanamo Bay

by Rob Walker | April 11, 2008 at 12:06 pm | 349 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

Secret Khadr Document Mistakenly Released

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Omar Khadr, the Canadian teen who was only 15 when he was taken into custody at Guantanamo bay, was in trouble for nothing less than reading a copy of the lord of the rings script his lawyer had smuggled in.

Apparently the youth wants nothing more than to see the Lord of the Rings movies and the books themselves, while available at the highly controversial detainment camp, are in short supply and apparently the waiting list is extremely long.

Khadr's lawyer had given him the script smuggled within pages of legal notes so as to gain his confidence and trust, a point the lawyer says is instrumental in representing him.

Khadr, who is now 21 years old, is to appear before a military commission tomorrow to face five war crimes, including a charge of 'muder in violation of the laws of war".

The case of a confiscated box of legal documents concerning Omar Khadr ended this afternoon in a bizarre press conference about dominoes and the Lord of the Rings.
Khadr’s military lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, told reporters here yesterday that hundreds of pages of documents had been taken from Khadr, hindering his efforts to have the Toronto detainee help him prepare his case.

Guards have confiscated a "Lord of the Rings" movie screenplay from a former child soldier awaiting trial at Guantanamo, his lawyer and U.S. officials said Thursday.

Navy Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler, the military-appointed lawyer for Canadian Omar Khadr, told reporters he gave the detainee the script to build trust.

Omar Khadr's Guantanamo Bay saga took a turn for the surreal on Thursday, as the detained Canadian's captors and defense lawyers argued over whether Mr. Khadr is entitled to a copy of the Lord of the Rings screenplay.

On Wednesday, Mr. Khadr's U.S. military defense lawyer Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler complained that officials from the Joint Task Force — the soldiers in charge of Guantanamo Bay's detainee camps — had confiscated his client's legal materials.

Sometime in the past month, Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler claimed, soldiers had essentially seized hundreds of pages of legal documents the defense team had provided to Mr. Khadr.