(RepublicanView.org) – The Supreme Court of the United States issued a scathing rejection of a bid filed by a former inmate of Guantanamo Bay.
Omar Khadr, 37, of Canada, hoped the court would vacate the convictions against him after he killed a US soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. He is also convicted of several other terror-related crimes that were largely committed when he was only 15.
He filed an appeal with the Supreme Court after the judge of a lower court refused to consider his case. That court said their decision was made because Khadr waived all rights to an appellate review during a plea bargain with the US military commission in 2010.
Khadr was born in Canada, but his father took him to Afghanistan as a child. His father, who served as a senior official for the Islamic terrorist group Al Qaeda, reportedly had him trained to build bombs. The factory he worked at was raided by US soldiers in 2002, leading to an intense firefight. Khadr killed US Army Medic Sergeant Christopher Speer after throwing a grenade.
He was taken into custody by US officials after two bullets left him severely wounded. He was later transported to a Canadian facility. However, he received bail in 2015 and finished serving his sentence in 2019. He has since worked hard to have his convictions dismissed in the US. Khadr was Guantanamo Bay’s youngest inmate at the time of his incarceration.
He pleaded guilty in 2007 to five charges related to violating war laws and an attempted murder. However, he was hopeful of having his convictions overturned in 2012 when Washington DC’s US Court of Appeals issued a ruling that officials couldn’t charge defendants with specific crimes that were committed before 2006’s Military Commissions Act. He then decided to appeal his case even after waiving his appeal rights.
His legal team later went before the Supreme Court to argue that he never actually finalized the paperwork. SCOTUS still ultimately ruled against his request.
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