Child Soldier or War Criminal?

The upcoming trial of Canadian Omar Khadr, the only Western detainee still at Guantanamo, will offer a rare window into the war on terror. The Obama administration's first full war-crimes prosecution will face the question of whether Khadr was a child soldier whose father pushed him into al-Qaeda at age 10 or an "unprivileged enemy belligerent" guilty of committing a war crime.

Khadr, the son of an al-Qaeda financier, was 15 when he was captured by US forces in Afghanistan in 2002. After being interrogated he admitted to hurling a grenade that killed a US soldier, a confession he has since recanted. Now 23, he's spent a third of his life at Guantanamo, the Miami Herald reports. He has called the war court a political sham and is viewed as likely to boycott the trial. Pretrial testimony revealed Khadr was told tales of rape, shackled and hooded, and chained to a stretcher, possibly sedated, while being interrogated; it's unknown which, if any, of his incriminating statements will be permitted to be brought to trial. (More Omar Khadr stories.)