Child soldier's confession under torture is legal evidence for USA

The outrageous case of Guantanamo Nazi prison, which has not yet been dismantled by Barack Obama in spite of his electoral promises, goes one step further as Omar Khadr is going to face a farce trial under his military captors who took him from Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.

The accusation, for which he could face a life sentence, is to throw a grenade killing a US soldier, in the context of the US/NATO invasion of Afghanistan in 2002, of more than questionable legitimacy itself.

The only evidence: his own confession, obtained under the system of torture that is well known to operate in the colonial base in Cuba.

Under international law, child soldiers are to be considered victims.

Under any sensible law as well, confession obtained under tortures or possible tortures cannot be evidence. Otherwise it is going back to the times of the Inquisition.

However the military tribunal that is to judge Omar Khadr has accepted this only piece of "evidence" as valid. Khadr is however still hopeful that justice will prevail and rejects to enter a plea bargain.

The young Omar Khadr, now 23, has seen some of the best years of his life wasted in one of the worst prisons on Earth.

While he initially cooperated with his captors, he is now set not to accept the impositions of the farce trial and may even dismiss his military attorney out of lack of faith on the system.

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. And if the world doesn't see all this, to what world am I being released to? A world of hate ... and discrimination.

I hate to say this but he is damn right. It may cost him dearly but it is on this kind of fearless heroism that justice is built upon.

Source: Al Jazeera


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Update (Aug 13): Daphne Eviatar reports at the Huffington Post on the first day of the farce-trial which was suspended indefinitely (or for 30 days, not fully clear) after the defense lawyer suddenly collapsed while interrogating a witness.

It is interesting the report on the actual facts that seem to transpire in the trial: Omar Khadr was not just a minor at the time of the alleged "crime" (fighting in a war, defending his country from a foreign invasion if anything) but there is absolutely no evidence that he even fought at all. There are reports that the person who threw the grenade, killing a US soldier, was someone else and that Khadr did not even participate in the combat at all, where he had been brought by his father in a clear case of parental coercion.

They also report that he was shot in the back twice in spite of being unarmed, (i.e. a civilian minor) surviving almost miraculously. Daphne Eviatar asks: who is the real war criminal here?

Spanish Inquisition attacks Chávez now.

Spanish Attorney General, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, has declared that the Spanish government will follow "till the end" with the trial opened at the Audiencia Nacional (aka Neoinquisition) against the Venezuelan government for allegedly promoting cooperation between the Basque armed organization ETA and the Colombian guerrilla FARC.

It must be said that the allegations of collaboration between the two militias pre-date the Bolivarian government in Venezuela.

For the Venezuelan President this trial, along with the accusations by the Interamerican Comission of Human Rights and the visit of Hillary Clinton to several Latin American capitals this week, are the counter-offensive of Washington and Madrid to the formation of the Community of Caribbean and American States, which undermines their role as colonial powers.

I would go further and suggest that it is the first clear attempt to list Venezuela as "terrorist rogue dictatorship" as means to justify an already planned invasion of the rebellious but strictly democratic country.

Source: Gara [es].

Update: See also Venezuela Analysis [en] and this other article at Gara [es]: even members of the undemocratically imposed "Basque government", of the same party as Conde-Pumpido ask to treat this matter "with prudence". Apparently an individual named Arturo Cubillas Fontán (never heard of him before), who has held positions in the Venezuelan government, is accused of being "ETA member", all based on the "magic laptop" of FARC negotiator Raúl Reyes, ambushed and murdered by the Colombian army at Ecuadorean soil in 2008, which has been manipulated by the Colombian Army at whim.

Update (March 4): Also reported at La Haine [es], where we are informed that the said Antonio Cubillas is exiled in Venezuela because of the agreements between Felipe González and Carlos Andrés Pérez in the 1980s (I guess that in the frame of the negotiations of Algiers). Insisting in the lack of credibility of the "magic laptop" that the Colombian Army claims to be of murdered guerrilla negotiator Raúl Reyes.

In a parallel development, you may be interested in knowing about the whereabouts of former star judge of the Neoinquisition, Baltasar Garzón. He is facing a rough trial himself, formally for challenging the Amnesty Law of 1978 and attempting to judge the crimes of fascism but in fact, it seems that this move has been triggered by another even more daring cause opened by Garzón against members of the Bush administration for crimes against Humanity in relation to the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp.

Read more at Voltairenet [en].

Al Jazeera journalist liberated from Guantanamo

Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Hajj, also known as Prisioner 345, has been detained in the US concentration camp for more than five years. He was liberated after 465 days in hunger strike (since January 2007, he was force-fed)..

He was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 when working, fully documented, for the Qatari public network Al Jazeera. He was accused of arbitary and unproven "terrorist activities", obvious made-up accusations like working for a beverage company that allegedly financed militants in Bosnia and Chechnya. In all lights it was a punishment attempt against Al Jazeera for breaking US media censorship and talking of the other side of the "war on terror". He has rejected all charges and never brought before any court.

His brother could not recognized him at first because he looked "like a man in his 80s" (he is 39 in fact).

He was hospitalized as soon as he arrived to Khartoum. But from hospital he has conceded some interviews:

I'm very happy to be in Sudan, but I'm very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantanamo. Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad and they get worse by the day.

Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values.

In Guantanamo ... rats are treated with more humanity. But we have people from more than 50 countries that are completely deprived of all rights and privileges.

And they will not give them the rights that they give to animals.

He was liberated along with other detainess, in what seems an attempt of the Bush administration to get rid of as many prisioners as possible before the end of the current presidential term. His lawyer, David Remes, denounced that there was an element of racism in the way al-Hajj had been treated. The Europeans would never receive this treatment, he said.

For further information:
- Al Jazeera: Sami al-Hajj hits out at US captors.
- Wikipedia: Sami al-Hajj.
- Prisioner 345: Campaign to free Sami al-Hajj, held in Guantanamo.