January 14, 2006	Saturday	Zilhaj 13, 1426

GUANTANAMO BAY, Jan 13: Lawyers sparred at US ‘war on terror’ trials at the Guantanamo detention camp on Thursday, as Washington asked the US Supreme Court to dismiss a challenge to the legality of the special hearings.

Attorneys for a Canadian teenager accused of killing a US military medic called for the chief prosecutor to be replaced at his hearing at the naval base in Cuba for comments he made about the defendant at a press conference.

The military prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, told reporters on Tuesday that he had found some profiles sympathetic to the teenager, Omar Khadr, “nauseating.”

Khadr, only 15 when detained in Afghanistan in July 2002, is accused of killing the medic with a hand grenade during a battle.

While his defenders have portrayed him as a confused teenager, Davis said Khadr was a cold blooded killer who had been trained by Al-Qaeda.

The Canadian-born teenager was raised in Pakistan, where his father, an Al-Qaeda financier, was killed in 2003.

The presiding military judge in Khadr’s case, Colonel Robert Chester, adjourned the hearing so that he could watch a recording of the press conference.

Chester also told Khadr’s attorney, Muneer Ahmad, that he thought it was a mistake for him to tell reporters at the same Tuesday press conference the tribunal was a “sham” and the procedures “unfair.”—AFP