Slip-Up Undermines White House Case Against Child Soldier Omar Khadr

The document, created in 2004, turned out to be an interview of a witness to Khadr's capture.In it, the witness describes finding two people alive in the Afghan compound in which Khadr was captured — the witness shot and killed the first man before he saw Khadr. Then, according to Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler, Khadr, who was 15 years old at the time, "was shot on sight — in the back — twice — while wounded, sitting and leaning against a wall facing away from his attackers."
Military Commission officials tried to demand the document back from reporters, threatening their access to future proceedings if they didn't cooperate. Finally officials agreed to let the press report on the document, as long as certain details weren't disclosed.

The accidental release of this document also points to the extreme secrecy the government uses in its prosecutions through overclassifying evidence. The defense can only see the evidence the government chooses to release — giving an inherently unfair advantage to the government's case.

In other torture news, ACLU of Northern California Executive Director Maya Harris authored an op-ed for the Sacramento Bee today about today's hearing in San Jose in our extraordinary rendition case against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan. Maya discusses the Bush administration's abuse of the "state secrets" privilege, and how it shouldn’t be allowed to use this argument in its effort to dismiss the case.

Finally, for those of you who can't get enough of polls, tomorrow we'll have a new one that has nothing to do with the candidates running for president. This survey of 1,000 likely voters in the upcoming election cycle has to do with the destruction of the CIA torture tapes. Stay tuned for the results after 2 p.m. tomorrow!

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Note: extraordinary account see yesterday's post the government has mes... a secret government do... an op-ed for the Sacra... today's hearing in San... case against Boeing su... "state secrets" privilege destruction of the CIA... Source.