{"id":2384,"date":"2008-02-06T10:56:31","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T10:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/us-government-misrepresent-human-rights-watch\/2384\/"},"modified":"2008-02-06T10:56:31","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T10:56:31","slug":"us-government-misrepresent-human-rights-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/us-government-misrepresent-human-rights-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"US government misrepresent Human Rights Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

US: Don\u2019t Misrepresent Human Rights Watch to Justify Guantanamo Trials
\n<\/font>Contrary to US Claims, Human Rights Watch Opposes Khadr Prosecution<\/font><\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0The US government fundamentally misrepresented Human Rights Watch\u2019s position to justify its prosecution of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen facing charges for war crimes allegedly committed when he was just 15, Human Rights Watch said today.<\/p>\n

Responding to Khadr\u2019s argument that the military commissions do not have legal authority to prosecute child offenders, the US government in a court filing Monday invoked Human Rights Watch to support its claim that the military commissions should go forward. \u201cNot only is this position wrong, it\u2019s absurd,\u201d said Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor at Human Rights Watch. \u201cHuman Rights Watch has called the military commissions fundamentally unfair from the start<\/a> \u2014 and even more egregious that Khadr was a child when he allegedly committed the crimes.\u201d In making the claim, the government cited a document that the US Campaign to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers \u2014 a coalition that includes Human Rights Watch \u2014 submitted<\/a> to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in November 2007. The government argued that because the submission did not explicitly condemn the use of military commissions to try Khadr, it amounted to implicit support. However, the submission cited Khadr\u2019s case as an example of the United States\u2019 failure to meet its obligations to rehabilitate and otherwise treat child soldiers in accordance with their age. \u201cTo read the campaign\u2019s submission as implicitly supporting Khadr\u2019s trial before military commissions indicates at best the government\u2019s desperation, and at worst a disingenuous attempt to pervert Human Rights Watch\u2019s well known position on this,\u201d Baldwin said. \u201cThe document the government cites actually uses the Khadr case as an example of the United States\u2019 failure to respect its obligatios on the treatment of child soldiers.\u201d Human Rights Watch said that Khadr\u2019s trial should either be dismissed or moved to civilian courts that take into account his status as a child at the time of his offense. Human Rights Watch also reiterated its call on Canada<\/a> to intervene on behalf of one of its citizens and urge the United States to transfer Khadr to a fair process or repatriate him to Canada for rehabilitation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US: Don\u2019t Misrepresent Human Rights Watch to Justify Guantanamo Trials Contrary to US Claims, Human Rights Watch Opposes Khadr Prosecution \u00a0The US government fundamentally misrepresented Human Rights Watch\u2019s position to justify its prosecution of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen facing charges for war crimes allegedly committed when he was just 15, Human Rights Watch said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21,18,1616],"tags":[49],"class_list":{"0":"post-2384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"category-human-rights","8":"category-latest-news","9":"category-usa-news","10":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}