A military judge presiding over the first Guantanamo tribunal of the Obama era will seek to determine this week whether U.S. forces tortured a confession from a Canadian accused of murdering an American soldier in Afghanistan, Reuters reported. The judge will decide what evidence can be used against Omar Khadr, 23, one of six prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo in eastern Cuba that the Obama administration has designated for trial by military tribunal. The base's detention center currently holds 183 captives. Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured during a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound near the Afghan city of Khost in July 2002, has spent a third of his life locked up with adult prisoners at Guantanamo. He could be jailed for life if convicted in the first war crimes tribunal since World War Two to prosecute someone for acts committed as a child. U.S. President Barack Obama froze the tribunal prosecutions immediately after his inauguration in January 2009 to give his administration time to sort out what he has called "quite simply a mess" at Guantanamo. The military prison was opened in 2002 under then-President George W. Bush to house suspected terrorists and has drawn international condemnation and criticism from human rights groups who say inmates have been abused and tortured. Khadr's evidentiary hearing, starting on Tuesday, is scheduled to be the last step before his July trial in the tribunals, which Obama criticized as a presidential candidate. -- SPA
