Omar Khadr

Omar Ahmed Sayid Khadr (born September 19, 1986) is a Canadian who was convicted of murder after he threw a grenade during an armed conflict in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of an American soldier. At the time, he was 15 years old and had been brought to Afghanistan by his father, who was affiliated with an extreme religious group. During the conflict Khadr was badly wounded, and captured by the Americans. He was subsequently held at Guantanamo Bay for 10 years. He pled guilty to murder in October 2010 to several war crimes prior to being tried by a United States military commission. He was the youngest prisoner and last Western citizen to be held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay. He accepted an eight-year sentence, not including time served, with the possibility of a transfer to Canada after at least one year to serve the remainder of the sentence.

During a firefight on July 27, 2002, in the village of Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan, in which several Taliban fighters were killed, Khadr, not yet 16, was severely wounded. After being detained at Bagram, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. During his detention, he was interrogated by Canadian as well as US intelligence officers.

Khadr was the first person since World War II to be prosecuted in a military commission for war crimes committed while still a minor. His conviction and sentence were widely denounced by civil rights groups and various newspaper editorials. His prosecution and imprisonment was condemned by the United Nations, which has taken up the issue of child soldiers.

On September 29, 2012, Khadr was repatriated to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canadian custody. He was initially assigned to a maximum-security prison but moved to a medium-security prison in 2014. Khadr was released on bail in May, 2015 (pending an appeal of his U.S. conviction) after the Alberta Court of Appeal refused to block his release as had been requested by the Canadian government.

Khadr's lawyers successfully challenged his incarceration in Canada as an adult offender. On May 14, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the federal government's position, ruling that Khadr had clearly been sentenced by the U.S. military tribunal as a minor. If he loses his appeal of the US conviction, underway in a separate action, he would serve any remaining time in a provincial facility rather than in a federal penitentiary.

In 2013, Khadr filed a C$20,000,000 amended civil suit against the government of Canada for conspiring with the U.S. in abusing his rights. He said he had signed the plea agreement because he believed it was the only way he could gain transfer from Guantanamo, and claimed that he had no memory of the firefight in which he was wounded.

Khadr was born in Toronto on September 19, 1986, to Ahmed Khadr and Maha el-Samnah, Egyptian and Palestinian immigrants who became naturalized Canadian citizens.Their family had moved to Peshawar, Pakistan in 1985, where his father worked for charities helping Afghan refugees.their family outside of Canada, as she disliked some of its Western social influences.

In 1992, Khadr's father was severely injured while in Logar, Afghanistan; the family moved with him for a time back to Toronto so he could recuperate. After the move, Omar became "hypersensitive to tension in the family" and would often quote Captain Haddock from The Adventures of Tintin. Enrolled at ISNA Elementary School for Grade 1, Omar's teachers described him as "very smart, very eager and very polite".

After the family's return to Pakistan, in 1995 the father Ahmed Khadr was arrested in Pakistan following Ayman al-Zawahiri's bombing of the Egyptian embassy there, and accused of financially aiding the conspirators. After Ahmed was hospitalised after engaging in a hunger strike, 9-year-old Omar spent every night sleeping on the floor beside his father's bed until his father's release a year later for lack of evidence.

In 1996, Khadr's father moved his family to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where he worked for an NGO.

Following the 1998 embassy bombings, the United States retaliated by bombing suspected al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. Expecting a similar retaliation following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the mother and children of the Khadr family retreated toward the Pakistani mountains, where the father visited infrequently. Omar helped by doing the family shopping, washed laundry and cooked meals.

In early 2002, the youth was living in Waziristan with his mother and younger sister. He took up beading his mother's clothes as a hobby. At one point, he was forced to wear a burqa and disguise himself as a girl to avoid scrutiny, an act that upset him. When his father returned, Omar asked to be allowed to stay at a group home for young men, despite his mother's protests. His father agreed, and a month later allowed Omar to accompany a group of Arabs associated with Abu Laith al-Libi, who needed a Pashto translator during their stay in Khost. The 15-year-old Khadr promised to check in regularly with his mother.

According to charges signed in April 2007 by the military commission officer Susan J. Crawford, Khadr received "one-on-one" weapons training in June 2002 and his visits to his mother and sister became less frequen.

From approximately February 2002, a team of American soldiers were using the abandoned Soviet airbase in Khost, Afghanistan, as an intelligence-gathering outpost, where they tried to blend in and gain the trust of the local community. In the early morning of July 27, 2002, a team composed of 19th Special Forces Group, the 505th Infantry Regiment and a "militia", composed of approximately twenty Afghan fighters loyal to the warlord Pacha Khan Zadran and led by his brother Kamal, had been sent from the airbase on a reconnaissance mission The US forces search turned up no evidence against the occupants of a house they checked out.

While the US soldiers were at the house, a report came in that a monitored satellite phone had just been used 300–600 metres from the group's location. Seven soldiers were sent to investigate the site of the phone call. Led by Major Randy Watt, the group included XO Captain Mike Silver, Sgt Christopher Speer, Layne Morris and Master Sgt. Scotty Hansen, the latter three from the 19th Special Forces Group; Spc. Christopher J. Vedvick from the 505th, and his fire team.

The men reached a residential complex with earthen huts and a granary surrounded by a 10-foot (3.0 m) stone wall, with a green metal gate approximately 100 metres from the main hut. They saw children playing around the buildings and an old man sleeping under a nearby tree.

Seeing five men he described as "well-dressed," sitting around a fire in the main residence, with AK-47s visible in the room, Morris has said that he either approached and told the occupants to open the front door[31] or that he stayed out of sight, returned to his men and set up a perimeter around the complex. Either way, the team waited 45 minutes for support from the soldiers searching the first residence. At one point, Morris chided the soldiers from the 82nd for setting up a defensive perimeter with their backs to the house, rather than covering the house.

A crowd of approximately 100 local Afghans had gathered around the area to watch the incident unfold. An Afghan militiaman was sent toward the house to demand the surrender of the occupants, but retreated under gunfire.

Reinforcements from the 3rd Platoon of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion 505th Infantry Regiment arrived under the command of Captain Christopher W. Cirino, bringing the total number of Americans and Afghan militia to about fifty. Two of Zadran's militia were sent into the compound to speak with the residents; they returned to the US position and reported that the men claimed to be Pashtun villagers. The Americans told them to return and say the Americans wanted to search their house regardless of their affiliation.

Upon hearing this, the occupants of the hut opened fire, shooting both militiamen.

Several women fled the huts and ran away, while the occupants began throwing grenades at the American troops, with intermittent rifle fire. After the firefight, one of the soldiers contradicted this, saying only one woman and one child were present, and both were detained by US forces after exiting the huts.

Morris and Silver took up positions outside the stone wall, when Morris fell back into Silver, with a cut above his right eye and shrapnel embedded in his nose. Both Silver and Morris first thought the wound was due to Morris's rifle malfunctioning, but it was later attributed to an unseen grenade.In an alternate account, Morris has said that he was inside the compound and hiding behind the granary, preparing to fire a grenade into a wall of the house, when he was shot. Morris was dragged a safe distance from the action, and was shortly after joined by Spc. Michael Rewakowski, Pfc. Brian Worth and Spc. Christopher J. Vedvick, who had also been wounded by the grenade attacks.

At 9:10 UTC, they sent a request for MedEvac to the 57th Medical Detachment. Ten minutes later, a pair of UH-60s were deployed, with AH-64 Apaches as escort. Arriving at the scene, the Apaches strafed the compound with cannon and rocket fire, while the medical helicopters remained 12 miles (19 km) from the ongoing firefight. The helicopters landed at 10:28 UTC to load the wounded aboard. A pair of A-10 Warthogs performed gun runs and dropped 500lb bombs on the compound.

At this point,a five-vehicle convoy of ground reinforcements arrived, bringing the number of troops to approximately 100. Two of these vehicles were damaged beyond use by the militants. Ten minutes later, the MedEvac left for Bagram Airbase and planes arrived, bombing the houses along with the helicopters. The MedEvac reached Bagram Airfield at 1130.

Unaware that Khadr and a militant had survived the bombing, the ground forces sent a team consisting of OC-1, Silver, Speer and three Delta Force soldiers through a hole in the south side of the wall.

The team began picking their way over dead animals and the bodies of three fighters.According to Silver's 2007 telling of the event, he heard a sound "like a gunshot", and saw the three Delta Force soldiers duck; a grenade went by them and exploded near Speer at the rear of the group, "wearing Afghan garb and helmetless." OC-1 reported that although he didn't hear any gunfire, the dust from the north side of the complex led him to believe the team was under fire from a shooter between the house and barn. He reported that a grenade was "lobbed" over the wall that led to the alley and landed 30–50 metres from the alley opening. Running towards the alley to escape the grenade, OC-1 fired a dozen M4 Carbine rounds into the alley as he ran past, although he couldn't see anything due to dust clouds. Crouching at the southeast entrance to the alleyway, OC-1 could see a man with a holstered pistol and two chest wounds moving on the ground next to an AK-47. From his position, OC-1 fired a single shot into the man's head, killing him.When the dust cleared, OC-1 saw Khadr crouched on his knees facing away from the action and wounded by shrapnel (it had just permanently blinded his left eye);[28] he shot the youth twice in the back.

Two soldiers kneel over the wounded Khadr.

OC-1 estimated that all the events since entering the wall had taken less than a minute up until this point, and that he had been the only American to fire his weapon. The soldiers threw an American grenade into the living quarters after first entering the complex. Silver initially claimed that two Delta Force troops had opened fire, shooting all three of the shots into Khadr's chest, after the youth was seen to be holding a pistol and facing the troops.These claims all directly contradict OC-1's version of events as the only eyewitness. OC-1 did agree however, that something was lying in the dust near Khadr's end of the alley, although he couldn't remember if it was a pistol or grenade.

Entering the alleyway, OC-1 saw two dead men with a damaged AK-47 buried in rubble; he believed they had been killed in the airstrikes, and confirmed that the man he had shot was dead. Moving back to Khadr, OC-1 tapped the motionless youth's eye, and found that he was alive. Turning him over onto his back for entering troops to secure, OC-1 began exiting the alleyway to find Speer, whom he was unaware had been wounded. While leaving the alleyway, he saw a third AK-47 and several grenades.Contradicting Morris's report of five well-dressed men, OC-1 said that his search of the rubble determined there had been only four occupants, all found in the same alleyway.

Khadr being treated by medics

Khadr was given on-site medical attention, during which time he repeatedly asked the medics to kill him, surprising them with his English. An officer present later recorded in his diary that he was about to tell a private to kill the badly wounded Khadr, when Delta Force soldiers ordered them not to harm the prisoner.He was loaded aboard a CH-47 helicopter and flown to Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, losing consciousness aboard the flight.

Khadr had accompanied three of the men he was staying with, as they went to Ayub Kheyl, to meet with other militants. Neither of his parents was told about the meeting. After learning of the battle, Ahmed reportedly shouted at Abu Laith al-Libi for not taking better care of his son.

The following day, soldiers including Silver returned to search the premises. Local villagers were believed to have taken away the bodies of the two men killed and given them an Islamic burial. They refused to disclose the location to the Americans, who wanted to identify the fighters.

Believing that the wooden boards beneath the last-killed rifleman could have been used to cover an underground chamber, the soldiers used an excavator to tear down the walls of the buildings. They uncovered five boxes of rifle ammunition, two rockets, two grenades and three rocket-propelled grenades in the huts. Some had accidentally detonated while lying in the smouldering ruins. A plastic bag was discovered in the granary, containing documents, wires and a videocassette. OC-1's report claims the videotape was found in the main house, rather than the granary, and also mentioned detonators modeled as Sega game cartridges.

Khadr handling explosives

The video shows Khadr toying with detonating cord as other men, including one later identified as Abu Laith al-Libi, assemble explosives in the same house that had been destroyed the day before by US forces. It is identifiable by its walls, rugs and the environment seen out the windows in the video. The men plant landmines while smiling and joking with the cameraman. A Voice of America report suggested that these were the landmines later recovered by American forces on a road between Gardez and Khost.

Ab Khail VOA Report

The BBC said the US forces and militia had come under small arms fire; a US source noted it was the first time the enemy "had stood his ground" since Operation Anaconda had ended four months earlier.Hansen and Watt were both awarded a Bronze Star, for running forward under fire to retrieve two fallen bodies. Sources differ on whether these were wounded American soldiers, including Layne Morris, or the two Afghan militiamen shot at the outset.  The five wounded men were awarded Purple Hearts.[36] Speer was moved from Bagram airbase to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he was removed from life support on August 7 and died; his heart, liver, lungs and kidneys were donated for use by other patients