Omar Khadr pleads guilty in his military-commissions trial, confirming the reporting that there was some sort of plea deal in the works to avoid the embarrassment of the U.S. trying someone for war crimes committed while they were a minor. Carol Rosenberg reports:
His 9 a.m. plea spared him a risk of life in prison, had he been convicted at trial to charges ranging from murder to conspiracy.
Instead, under a deal sealed through an exchange of diplomatic notes on Saturday, the United States will support a plan to transfer him to Canada at age 25 to serve the last seven years of an eight-year sentence.
The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not pledged to receive Khadr even if Washington invokes the prisoner transfer treaty between the United States and Canada.
This makes Khadr the fifth person to be convicted by military commission since they were created under the Bush administration, the second since they were revised under Obama. Of these, only one, the case of Osama bin Laden's limo driver, Salim Hamdan, resulted in anything resembling an actual trial. Al-Qaeda propagandist Ali al-Bahlul boycotted his own trial, and David Hicks, former bin Laden cook Ibrahim al-Qosi, and now Omar Khadr all secured plea deals.
