U.S. officer says he nearly ordered execution of Khadr in Afghanistan

[tuvor]

Source: Canadian Press

WASHINGTON - A U.S. Army officer was going to have Canadian Omar Khadr executed after a July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan but was stopped at the last moment by Special Forces troops, according to a diary account.

The witness excerpt, contained in legal briefs released Wednesday by the U.S. Defence Department, confirmed that a second terror suspect was alive when the grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer was thrown.

Khadr, 21, is being held in Guantanamo Bay, charged with murdering Speer. The U.S. government has maintained he was the only one who could have done it because all the other combatants were dead.

Not so, said the officer, who described an American soldier having Khadr in his sights "point blank."

Read more: http://www.news1130.com/news/national/article.jsp?content=n0319108A

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Much more worth reading beyond these four paragraphs.

[PDJane]

1. This is a disgrace to both your government

and mine. A juvenile is shot in the back and picked up on a battlefield....and charged with murder.

If it's a war, then sorry, you get shot at. Don't blame the only juvenile that manages to survive.

[tuvor]

2. I agree, but I'm Canadian, too. n/t

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. Even if the kid did it, and he WAS only a kid at the time

.
.
.

The holding of this Canadian for over 5 years in one of the most disgraceful detention centers is disgusting.

The "mighty" USA keeping a child in custody to "protect" the USA.

As for OUR government not being tough with the USA, that is also disgusting.

If our government had some balls when it comes to dealing with the USA on shit like this, we should just shut off the gas and oil going to the USA.

But we got Harper, all lips,

no balls.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Unbearable. Hearing an officer admit he told his soldiers to slaughter people in cold blood,

is impossible to appreciate.

People have been feeling there has been something completely wrong about this young man's situation for a long, long time. Reading the seriousness of his injuries and the condition in which he lived for so long leading up to the time he was interrogated does lead you to believe anything he told them would have been coerced.

Who would expect a young guy whose heart could be seen beating through his wounds to live, and then, in living, to endure what happened to him afterward? Oh, god.

If only someone could drag _{George W. Bush} and _{Dick Cheney} and their entire ghoulish party of sadistic right-wing sadists to be present while these people were struggling for their lives, and to look them in the eyes....

How useless our chickenhawk politicians really are. They make LOUSY human beings.

Hoping every day this poor man will be allowed to go home, somehow, and the others who have also been living in hell.