Posted by Dustin Lewis on September 02, 2010  |   Comment  |   Subscribe

The prosecution of Omar Khadr in a U.S. Military Commission at Guantanamo Bay raises many important international humanitarian law issues. One such issue is whether the charges against Khadr comport with IHL and municipal law. In a recent paper, Professor David Glazier examines the validity of those charges, and concludes that:

"[T]he specifications (…) either fail to state a recognized violation of the law of war, or where the offense is facially valid, the specific conduct charged does not meet the law’s definition of the crime. The perverse irony is that the only ‘war crime’ present in Khadr’s Guantánamo courtroom appears to be the denial of a fair trial, and the perpetrator is the government, not the defendants."

One of the charges against Khadr that Glazier assesses is the offence of committing “murder in violation of the law of war.” For a comparative analysis, see Professor John C. Dehn's recent article on the legal basis for charging “murder in violation of the law of war” under the U.S. Military Commissions Act.