Guantanamo trial delay could force jury review: Expert Thursday, 02 September 2010 04:50

WASHINGTON: The trial of the sole Westerner detained at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is set for mid-October, but a US expert said yesterday the jury is likely to face new questions before it can resume.

“The trial will resume with the same legal teams and panel members,” Pentagon spokeswoman Tanya Bradsher said in announcing October 18 as the resumption date for the trial -- the first full prosecution there since US President Barack Obama took office.

Canadian Omar Khadr’s military defense lawyer Jon Jackson had collapsed at the outset of the trial in mid-August, and military officials said he needed at least one month of convalescent leave.

Medical and scheduling issues extended the break to a full two months, and Michelle Lindo McCluer, director of the National Institute of Military Justice at American University in Washington, said re-questioning the selected jury was highly likely.

“I would almost guarantee that the judge would say, ‘Have you heard anything about this trial? Have you had any discussion with anyone about the trial?’” McCluer said.

Judge Patrick Parrish would be looking out for experiences by jurors during the two-month break “that would make them not fit to continue sitting on the trial,” she added.

“That would certainly be the intent of the judge now whether any panel members need to be exchanged (or) dismissed.”

She described the two-month break in a military case as unusual, saying “it certainly adds an interesting dynamic into this.”

Jackson and US prosecuting attorney Jeff Groharing had spent two full days in early August interviewing the 15 military officers who formed the group of potential jurors, seven of whom were chosen for the trial.

Now 23 and the last Westerner held at Guantanamo, Khadr is accused of throwing a hand grenade that killed a US soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002, when Khadr was 15.

Khadr grew up in Canada, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and he is the son of an Al Qaeda official who was killed in 2003.

At the outset of the trial prosecutors sought to depict Khadr as a committed fighter, but Jackson presented Khadr as a frightened boy, bleeding and under fire in a compound with three “bad men” who told him what to do.

Meanwhile, Mexican and US officials yesterday opened a first joint office to manage the distribution of more than $1.3bn in US security aid to help fight Mexico’s brutal drug gangs.

The office will oversee transfers of equipment and training under the so-called Merida Initiative, a $1.6bn three-year plan for Central America and mainly Mexico which the Obama administration is seeking to extend, a Mexican foreign ministry statement said.

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