Omar Khadr, motions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on the morning of October 23, 2008. Janet Hamlin Illustrator.

Colin Perkel
THE CANADIAN PRESS

The judge presiding over Omar Khadr’s military commission proceedings issued an order today that the hearings, abruptly halted by U.S. President Barack Obama in January, are to go ahead on June 1.

The order from Col. Patrick Parrish came on the eve of a UN Security Council debate on the issue of child soldiers, an event Khadr’s lawyers planned to piggyback on with a news conference highlighting his plight.

“The commission is setting 1 June, 2009 as the next hearing date,” Parrish wrote. “This notice will give all parties sufficient time to prepare.”

Khadr, now 22, is accused of throwing a hand grenade that killed an American special forces soldier following a four-hour firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002.

The Toronto-born Khadr was 15 at the time.

Cmdr. Walter Ruiz, one of Khadr’s Pentagon-appointed lawyers, said he planned at Wednesday’s news conference in New York to stress the age issue and that Washington has violated an international child-welfare treaty.

The Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child essentially obliges signatories to treat soldiers under the age of 18 as victims in need of rehabilitation and reintegration.

“It would be adding insult to injury to prosecute him on top of the fact that we basically failed to comply with every provision of the Optional Protocol,” Ruiz said Tuesday from his office in Washington, D.C.

“This is an issue of monumental importance, particularly because the decisions that this administration makes are going to be in essence setting an important precedent.”

Khadr’s fate is currently under consideration by a presidential review panel, which is due to make recommendations by May 20. Obama halted all military-commission cases in January pending the review.

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Tags: Afghanistan, child soldiers, military commission, Omar Khadr, President Barack Obama

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