US rights groups demand release of young Gitmo inmate

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120703§ionid=3510203


Human Rights organizations have demanded that Washington drop military charges against a Guantanamo Bay detainee captured by the Americans at the age of 15.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Human Rights Watch, and Juvenile Law Center organizations have issued a joint letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, urging the release of Omar Khadr, a Canadian national arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade at a US army officer.

They also say that Khadr should be prosecuted in accordance with international juvenile justice and fair trial standards in a federal court.

"Trying Omar Khadr in a discredited military tribunal flies in the face of universally recognized standards of juvenile justice," ACLU's human rights program director Jamil Dakwar said Friday, adding, "As a former child soldier and victim of abuse in US custody, Omar Khadr should first and foremost be a candidate for repatriation and rehabilitation, not subject to prosecution in an illegitimate system of military commission."

Khadr's lawyers say that the then-teenager was kept under painful stress while in custody at the notorious US Naval prison compound at Guantanamo Bay.

The three organizations have asked US officials to send him back to Canada after having spent nearly a third of his life in abusive detention.

US observers have viewed Khadr's case as just one obvious example of America's total disregard for human rights and juvenile welfare despite its strong condemnation of other nations for far less severe rights violations.