Omar Khadr

Who is Omar Khadr?

Omar Ahmed Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was one of the youngest captives and the last Western citizen to be held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Captured at the age of 15 years and 10 months on July 27, 2002 by American forces in the village of Ayub Kheyl, Afghanistan, he was detained, interrogated and sent to Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. In October 2010, he pleaded guilty in a plea agreement to the charges of war crimes, including murder in violation of the law of war and providing material support for terrorism under very controversial circumstances. Khadr was to be tried by a Guantanamo military commission tribunal, a venue reserved for non-American enemy combatants, but this was averted by the plea agreement signed by Khadr after 10 years detention without charge.

He accepted an 8-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 there, based on a diplomatic agreement.

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. He has been frequently referred to as a child soldier. He was formally identified as such by the head of the United Nations child soldier program in a letter to the Military Commission in October 2010. The last Western citizen held at Guantanamo, Khadr was unique in that Canada had chosen not to seek extradition or repatriation despite the urgings of Amnesty International, UNICEF, the Canadian Bar Association and other prominent organizations.