Military lawyer for Guantanamo detainee: evidence suggests US soldiers committed war crimes

The military lawyer for an alleged al-Qaida fighter at Guantanamo Bay said Thursday that accounts of the firefight in which he was captured indicate some U.S. soldiers — and not his client — should be charged for war crimes.

During the final moments of a July 2002 raid on an al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan, an American soldier killed one combatant who lay moaning with a rifle at his side, and nearly executed 15-year-old Omar Khadr after shooting him twice in the back, according to eyewitness accounts revealed at Khadr's pretrial hearings.

Medics treated Khadr's wounds and he was later flown to the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 275 men are held, most suspected of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

The Canadian citizen is expected to be among the first detainees to face a U.S. war-crimes trial since the World War II era.

The latest account of the firefight was revealed by the Pentagon on Wednesday: A U.S. Army officer wrote in his diary that he saw a soldier "just waste" a suspected al-Qaida fighter with bursts from his assault rifle. The officer said he was about to tell the soldier to also kill the wounded Khadr when U.S. Special Forces soldiers stopped them.

The shooter said in his account, revealed earlier, that he heard moaning from a pile of rubble, saw a man laying beside an AK-47 rifle, and shot him in the head. He then spotted Khadr stirring and fired two rounds into his back.

Khadr's attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the soldiers' actions reflected disregard for the laws of armed conflict in the war on al-Qaida and the Taliban.

"If this diarist's account is true, and soldiers were executing or attempting to execute wounded combatants, you've got ... evidence of war crimes," Kuebler said.

Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith denied that U.S. forces acted improperly.

"Coalition forces were actively engaged in a firefight moments before Khadr's capture," Smith said in an e-mail to the AP. "When coalition forces discovered they had a wounded unlawful enemy combatant, they applied lifesaving measures to Khadr immediately."

The partially classified evidence released this week provides a closer look at the vicious fight at the mud-walled complex near the town of Khost, where Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a member of the elite Delta Force, was killed. Khadr is charged with murder in Speer's death.

Army Sgt. Layne Morris, a Green Beret who was wounded by a grenade in the earlier stages of the firefight, told AP on Thursday that he learned that some soldiers inside the compound were upset Khadr got medical attention before injured Americans, but that he never heard any suggestion of killing him outright.

"Omar Khadr owes his life to U.S. soldiers. What the defense is asserting is just outrageous," said Morris, who is retired from the military and is permanently blinded in one eye from his wound, by phone from South Jordan, Utah.

Kuebler said he might raise the issue about the soldiers' conduct in the Guantanamo Bay courtroom. If they acted inappropriately, it could affect their credibility as witnesses against Khadr, whose trial is expected to begin this summer, Kuebler said.

Khadr has been held since October 2002 at Guantanamo Bay. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on charges including murder, conspiracy and supporting terrorism. The military says it plans to charge about 80 detainees at Guantanamo, but so far none of the cases has gone to trial.