Plea to block first war crimes trial

Published: November 1, 2007, 8:07 pm

Lawyers for a Guantanamo Bay detainee — in a possible prelude to a dispute before the Supreme Court — asked the D.C. Circuit Court on Wednesday to delay the start of the first war crimes trial before a U.S. military commission at the Navy base located in Cuba. That trial, in at least its first stage, is now set to begin next Thursday for Omar Ahmed Khadr, who has been accused of killing a U.S. serviceman in Afghanistan when Khadr was 15 years old. The emergency motion for a stay (found here) is aimed, first, at a hearing that a military judge will hold to decide whether Khadr is an “unlawful enemy combatant.” The 21-year-old Canadian has filed an appeal to the Circuit Court (docket 07-1405) arguing that the judge has no authority to make that decision. The stay motion also implicates Khadr’s potential trial, because a finding that he is an “unlawful enemy combatant” would set the stage for the commission to go ahead with the trial.

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