U.S. charges Canadian with murder

The accused was 15 years old when he was captured in Afghanistan.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The U.S. military filed a murder charge Tuesday against the Canadian son of an alleged al-Qaida financier, who was captured at age 15 in Afghanistan and has spent almost five years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Omar Khadr, now 20, allegedly joined the Taliban in Afghanistan and threw a grenade that killed a U.S. Green Beret soldier in July 2002. He was captured as he lay wounded after that firefight, at an al-Qaida compound in eastern Afghanistan.
The U.S. military charged him with murder, attempted murder, providing support to terrorism, conspiracy and spying under rules for military trials adopted last year and first used to try David Hicks, the Australian sentenced to nine months in prison after pleading guilty.
The military said the Toronto-born Khadr would be arraigned within 30 days. He faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Khadr's Pentagon-appointed defense attorney, Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, said the U.S. would become the first country in modern history to try a war crimes suspect who was a child at the time of the alleged violations. The conspiracy charge is based on acts allegedly committed when Khadr was younger than 10, Vokey said.
The attorney urged Canada and the United States to negotiate a "political resolution" of the case to spare Khadr from a guaranteed conviction by "one of the greatest show trials on earth."
What critics said
Opponents of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay criticized authorities for subjecting Khadr to the same military trial system as adult terror suspects. In any other conflict, he would have been treated as a child soldier, said Jumana Musa, advocacy director of Amnesty International.
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said Khadr must be held accountable.
"The Defense Department will continue to uphold the law and bring unlawful enemy combatants to justice through the military commissions process," he said.
The U.S. military said Khadr hurled a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., and wounded Army Sgt. Layne Morris, of West Jordan, Utah. The charges say those acts were carried out "in violation of the law of war," but did not elaborate.
Speer's widow and Morris filed a civil lawsuit against Khadr and his father. In February, a judge awarded them 102.6 million.
The military alleges that Khadr also conducted surveillance of U.S. troops and planted land mines targeting American convoys.
Khadr allegedly received a month of basic training from al-Qaida in June 2002 that included the use of rocket-propelled grenades, rifles, pistols and explosives, according to the charge sheet signed by Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority for the military commissions.
Several of Khadr's family members have been accused of ties to Islamic extremists. His Egyptian-born father, Ahmad Said al-Khadr, was killed in Pakistan in 2003 alongside senior al-Qaida operatives. Canada is holding Khadr's brother Abdullah on a U.S. extradition warrant accusing him of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.
In March, the military tribunal at Guantanamo sentenced Hicks to nine months in prison after he pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism -- the first conviction at a U.S. war crimes trial since World War II.
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