Omar Khadr Fails to Complete Hail Mary (Allah) Clemency GITMO and SCOTUS Appeals

This was a bad week for Canadian Afghan GITMO detainee, Omar Khadr. His legal defense team was blanked out in two separate decisions by the highest military legal tribunal, the Convening Authority, and, the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS). Back in April we published an article“Omar Khadr’s Hail Mary (Allah) Pass at GITMO Tribunal”. Khadr’s defense counsels,  Lt. Col. Jon Jackson and Major Mitchell Schwartz concocted a 40 page appeal aimed at destroying the credibility of prosecution key witness Dr. Michael Welner. He is a renowned forensic psychiatrist and ABC News consultant. The clemency appeal also targeted Parrish, tribunal judge in the proceeding. Research work by Danish psychologist, Nicolai Sennels on than young criminal Muslims in a Copenhagen correctional facility was criticized for its principal finding their rejection of Western values. See Sennels’ article in the May 2010, NER, “Muslims and Westerners: The Psychological Differences”.

The Montreal Gazette reported on these two developments: “Tribunal rejects Khadr bid for clemency”.

The U.S. military tribunal that oversaw Omar Khadr's war crimes case has refused his bid for clemency, issuing a statement Thursday that simply confirms the eight-year sentence he received in a plea deal.

Under it, Khadr pleaded guilty last October to five war crimes, among them the murder of a U.S. serviceman during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. He received a sentence of eight years, with one more to be served in Guantanamo, and seven in a Canadian prison.

The Toronto native had sought to have the sentence reduced, arguing in part that the prosecution had been guilty of "misconduct" regarding the presentation of a key prosecution witness at the October sentencing hearing.

According to a prosecution memorandum obtained by Postmedia News, military prosecutors accused Khadr's defence of attempting to "rewrite history" in their bid for clemency.

The eight-page document vigorously rebuts defense claims that prosecutors "strong-armed" them into dropping a bid to challenge the credibility of forensic psychiatrist Dr. Michael Welner.

This was the second legal setback Khadr received this week.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled on whether to hear a years-old bid by Khadr to have a part of his case reviewed.

A majority of Supreme Court justices denied the review petition.

The Khadr ruling was a moot point because the 26-year-old's forfeiture of his claims against the U.S. government meant that the justices could not have reviewed any parts of his case anyway.

We will have more to say about the Khadr defense team and their special consultants attempt at “rewriting history” in a forthcoming NER article.