GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — A defiant Omar Khadr spoke out on his own behalf Monday, dismissing the U.S. military tribunal process as a “sham,”denouncing his American captors, and disclosing an offer to serve just five years of a 30-year sentence in exchange for pleading guilty to war crimes — an offer he summarily rejected.
In a calm, measured voice, Khadr made clear his feelings about the judicial machinery that has kept him captive at Guantanamo Bay for the better part of eight years, even smiling on occasion as he addressed the judge, Col. Patrick Parrish, and his Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney.
“I will not willingly let the U.S. government use me to fulfil their goal,” the bearded Khadr, 23, said as he explained why he rejected the deal he’d recently been offered by prosecutors.
“I have been used too many times as a child.”
Pleading guilty at his trial next month would “give an excuse to the government for torturing me and abusing me as a child,” he added.
The bulk of Monday’s roller-coaster hearing featured protracted exchanges between Khadr and Parrish about whether the Canadian detainee wanted to represent himself at his trial, currently scheduled to take place next month, or boycott the entire proceeding.
Khadr is charged with war crimes that include killing an American soldier in Afghanistan in July 2002 when he was just 15 years old. Human rights organizations and other advocates have argued Khadr was a child soldier and should have been rehabilitated by the U.S., not imprisoned.
Khadr is the only westerner remaining among Guantanamo’s 181 prisoners and remains the prison’s youngest detainee.
The Canadian government has refused to repatriate Khadr, whose late father was an accused al-Qaida financier, and has subsequently faced a series of legal headaches over its lack of action on the case.
In a morning session, under rapid-fire questioning from the judge, Khadr said that he intended to represent himself after firing all his lawyers, including two civilian American attorneys, last week.
But when he returned after a recess, he said he wanted to boycott.
“If I was in a formal court, I wouldn’t be doing this,” said Khadr, dressed in the white tunic and trousers that Guantanamo officials allow co-operative captives to wear.
“But because I’m in this court, I am forced to do this.... How can I ask for justice from a process that doesn’t have it?”
Parrish, in turn, said he could not allow Khadr to fire his court-appointed military lawyer, Lt.-Col. Jon Jackson, if he was boycotting the proceedings. Khadr expressed his disagreement.
“You’re forcing him on me,” he said.
“I don’t want him to be my lawyer. There are not going to be any discussions between me and Jackson.”
By day’s end, Parrish ruled the trial would tentatively go ahead on Aug. 10 after Jackson consults his bar association in Arkansas to see if it’s ethical to represent someone who doesn’t want to be represented.
The federal government said Monday it plans to appeal a Federal Court ruling that ordered it to come up with solutions to breaches of Khadr’s constitutional rights.
The ruling last week gave the government seven days to draft a list of remedies to its violation of Khadr’s Charter rights.