JUST IN...3 pm EST Jan 12, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Five human rights groups Monday urged US president-elect Barack Obama, to drop charges against Omar Khadr, the last westerner held at Guantanamo Bay whose trial is due to open on January 26.
"We write to you regarding Omar Khadr, the 22-year-old Canadian national slated to be tried by military commission at Guantanamo for crimes allegedly committed when he was aged 15," the groups said in a letter sent to Obama.
"If the trial is allowed to go forward, Omar Khadr will become the first person in recent years to be tried by any western nation for war crimes allegedly committed as a child.
"We urge that upon taking office, you act quickly to suspend the military commissions, drop the military commission charges against Khadr, and either repatriate him for rehabilitation in Canada or transfer him to federal court and prosecute him in accordance with international juvenile justice and fair trial standards," the letter said.
Copies of the letter, signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch, were sent to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Eric Holder, whom Obama has tapped for attorney general.
Khadr was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 and charged with killing a US soldier with a hand grenade. He also faces charges of material support for terrorism and espionage.
His father Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian-born Canadian national, was a suspected Al-Qaeda leader who was killed in a gunbattle with Pakistani troops.
Opposition parties in Canada and human rights groups have been clamoring for Khadr to be repatriated to Canada where he would be treated as a former child-soldier.
Obama said during his campaign for the presidency that he would close Guantanamo and rebuild "America's moral stature in the world".
Amnesty International on Friday challenged Obama, who takes office on January 20, to announce a date for the closure of Guantanamo, which is approaching its seventh anniversary as a detention center for suspects held by the United States in the war on terror.
In an interview that aired on US television Sunday, Obama assured his administration will eventually shutter the facility, but pleaded for time.
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