Spencer Ackerman laments the acceptance of evidence into Omar Khadr's trial that was obtained after he was threatened with rape:
While I was in Afghanistan, the military judge in Khadr's case, Colonel Patrick Parrish, ruled that much of the evidence against Khadr taken from his interrogations can be used against him at trial. Those statements came after one of his interrogators, Joshua Claus, told Khadr a grotesque parable about an uncooperative young detainee being raped to death. How any of this squares with the Military Commissions Act of 2009’s stated protections against the admissibility of statements delivered under coercive environments is beyond me.
Again, this is a ticking time bomb for the administration. And they know it. If they didn't know it, they wouldn't be fretting to the media about it. Once the case of the first child soldier trial since World War II (Khadr is now an adult, but he was 15 at the time of the alleged crime) gets appealed and is put before a federal judge, this case is likely to end the same way Mohammed Jawad's did. When that happens, the Liz Cheneys of the world aren't going to be any more merciful than they would have been if they had gotten Khadr to take a plea deal.
Of course, in the process, Khadr's trial may completely undermine the moral legitimacy of the military-commissions process all over again. But the administration should have thought of that before they brought them back and decided to try someone for the alleged killing of a uniformed soldier when the accused was 15 as a war crime.
