Lawyers for Omar Khadr will ask the U.S. military to drop charges faced by the young Canadian as they attend a pretrial hearing at the Guantanamo Naval Base on Monday.
They have maintained that Khadr, the only Canadian being held at the military detention facility in Cuba, should go free because trying him for crimes he allegedly committed as a minor contravenes international law.
Khadr, 23, has been in custody at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. He was arrested at age 15, following a shootout in Afghanistan.
Omar Khadr in a 2002 file photo, at age 15, around the time he was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Khadr's lawyers say he should be freed because he was a minor when he was arrested six years ago.
(Canadian Press)
He is accused of murder in the death of American medic Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer. Khadr is also charged with spying, conspiracy and supporting terrorism.
Dennis Edney, Khadr's Canadian lawyer, told CBC Newsworld on Sunday that one of the pretrial motions will ask that Khadr be treated as a child soldier.
"Here he is, as alleged by the Americans, to be picked up in a battlefield, and therefore, why is he not being treated as a child soldier?: Edney said. "The Bush administration has refused to do so. We'll be asking the judge to consider the law that applies and make a ruling in that regard."
Kadhr's military defence team has 15 different motions prepared. Some essentially assert that the military commission process itself is illegitimate because it was set up by Congress at the urging of the Bush White House in 2006, four years after the alleged crimes were committed.
"Khadr's [U.S. military] lawyer, Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, says that's a violation of a very entrenched legal principle: you can't pass a law, define crimes, and then retroactively go back and convict people," CBC journalist Bill Gillespie explained.
The defence team will also seek rulings, either Monday or on another day, on motions saying Khadr was 15 at the time of his arrest, and that under international law should be regarded as a child soldier.
Kuebler and other defence lawyers were expected to argue that the military commission doesn't have the jurisdiction to try a child, that they only have the jurisdiction to try adults, and therefore on those grounds, as well, the charges should be dismissed.
Groups want PM's intervention
Human rights groups say Prime Minister Stephen Harper should intervene in the case.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, and Human Rights First are urging Harper to formally request that the United States either try Khadr under juvenile justice rules, or send him back to Canada.
Foreign policy analyst Christopher Sands, who is with the Hudson Institute in Washington — a public policy research group — said U.S. prosecutors are keen on reaching a resolution.
"After several hearings over whether his status was correct or not under U.S. law, whether he could be tried as a military combatant or had other conditions which should be applied, we've gone through a lot of this now over the last couple of years, and finally we're getting to the point where we may actually see a trial," Sands said.
Khadr, at the age of fourteen.A military tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is hearing arguments today over the legality of trying Canadian Omar Khadr for alleged war crimes, given his status as a minor at the time of the incident.

Khadr is charged with the murder of Sgt. Christopher Speer, in addition to attempted murder, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying. The charges stem from a 2002 incident in which the  15-year old allegedly threw a grenade at U.S. troops after they directed an air-strike at the Afghan compound he was sharing with Mujahideen insurgents.

A number of groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have sent  a letter to Secretary of Defence Robert Gates alleging that the military tribunal is "not equipped to meet juvenile justice standards" and that Khadr should either be tried before a civilian court or repatriated to Canada.
Edney (L) and Kuebler (R)
Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch explained that the United States "should not make matters worse by prosecuting him before an unfair military tribunal."

Khadr's lawyer Dennis Edney challenged the attempts to label the 21-year old as a war criminal asking "...Why is he not being treated as a child soldier?"  Lt Cdr Bill Kuebler, the American military commissions counsel in the case, agreed that the charges should be dismissed since the tribunal lacked the jurisdiction to prosecute minors.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper however, has said that his country will not intervene in the case to seek extradition of Khadr, re-affirming Canada's status as the only Western country who has not demanded the release or extradition of their citizens held in Guantanamo.

Claiming to have been abused, threatened with rape and forced into painful positions since his arrival in Guantanamo in 2002 , Omar Khadr has been the subject of two psychiatric assessments that claimed he suffered from mental disorder as a result of his imprisonment, and was at risk of suicide.

Khadr was previously charged by the Guantanamo military commission in November 2005, before the judicial body was ruled "unlawful" by the Supreme Court. Last June, a military judge dismissed a second series of charges against Khadr because his 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal had classified as an "enemy combatant" rather than an "illegal enemy combatant", meaning that he did not qualify under the Military Commissions Act. Three months later, however, the Court of Military Commission Review ruled that the Commission would be allowed to make its own determination of the legality of a combatant.