Video shows Canadian building bombs in Afghanistan

Washington Post:

During a pretrial hearing here Thursday, military prosecutors played a 25-minute video that showed Canadian detainee Omar Khadr building roadside bombs in Afghanistan with several reputed al-Qaeda operatives.

"Allah willing, we will get a good number of Americans," said a voice on the poor-quality tape, which U.S. forces seized from the rubble of a compound where Khadr was wounded and captured in July 2002.

For the government, the video is a key piece of evidence that shows Khadr conspiring to kill U.S. service members. But the defense views it as illustrating Khadr's youth and that he was in thrall to a group of adults.

Khadr, who was 15 at the time he was captured, was first taken to Pakistan and Afghanistan when he was 10 by his father, an Osama bin Laden associate.

The video cuts among various scenes, including one showing Khadr and others wiring Russian anti-vehicle mines and some that show him sitting in a compound by an AK-47 assault rifle. It also shows mines being planted at night, but Khadr was not seen in those shots.

Khadr did not look up while the video was played and covered his eyes with his hand. The video was also played at a court hearing here in January 2009.

Khadr is accused of a number of war crimes, including murder. He is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces medic just before his capture.

The defense is seeking to suppress incriminating statements that Khadr made to his military and FBI interrogators, alleging that he was subjected to abuses. His attorneys also want the video suppressed in advance of a July trial, saying that the U.S. military learned of it only through the abusive interrogation of Khadr.

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The defense seeks to exploit the depravity of the exclusionary rule in an attempt to get someone off. The video is pretty powerful evidence that cuts against the defense case of a 15 year old innocent. This guy is part of the enemy force we are fighting against and he should be held at Gitmo until the end of the war.