Defying international condemnation, US prosecutors have requested an extra 25-year prison sentence for Omar Khadr, a former Guantanamo child detainee who was arrested at the age of 15.
Prosecutors claimed that Khadr’s sentence will send “a message to al-Qaeda,” AFP reported.
“Your sentence will send a message to al-Qaeda and others whose aims and goals are to kill and cause chaos around the world,” prosecuting attorney Jeffrey Groharing said in his closing statement at the special military tribunal.
Last Monday, Khadr entered a plea bargain with the US military to avoid a life prison sentence, pleading guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war, providing material assistance to a terrorist organization and espionage.
Amnesty International and other human rights groups have condemned his trial, calling on the US government to consider his status as a child soldier and not to imprison him any longer.
Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was just fifteen, has already spent eight years in the US naval prison in Guantanamo Bay.
He is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier during a July 2002 raid on an alleged al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan. Critics of the trial, however, complain that much of Khadr’s confessions were rendered through torture.
He is expected to get a reduced prison sentence in return for a guilty plea.
Source: Press TV