WASHINGTON - A U.S. Army officer was going to have Canadian Omar Khadr executed after a July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan but was stopped at the last moment by Special Forces troops, according to a diary account.
The witness excerpt, contained in legal briefs released Wednesday by the U.S. Defence Department, confirmed that a second terror suspect was alive when the grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer was thrown.
Khadr, 21, is being held in Guantanamo Bay, charged with murdering Speer. The U.S. government has maintained he was the only one who could have done it because all the other combatants were dead.
Not so, said the officer, who described an American soldier having Khadr in his sights "point blank.''
"I was about to tap (identity blacked out) on his back to tell him to kill him but the SF guys stopped us and told us not to.''
The officer also described the death of the other al Qaeda fighter.
"I remember looking over my right shoulder and seeing (redacted) just waste the guy who was still alive. He was shooting him with controlled pairs,'' or rapid execution-style firing.
Last month, another witness identified only as OC-1 provided the first testimony in a mistakenly released document that there was a second fighter alive.
The soldier said he killed the fighter before spotting Khadr, who was slumped against a wall facing away from him. He said he shot Khadr twice in the back.
The Pentagon has said American soldiers fired on Khadr in self-defence.
Khadr, who was 15 years old at the time, had two huge exit wounds in his upper left chest.
"(He's) missing a piece of his chest and I can see his heart beating,'' wrote one officer included in a legal motion.
Defence lawyer Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler related that Khadr's wounds "were infected, swollen and still seeping blood nearly seven months after the firefight.''
He was still being treated in hospital 10 months later, said Kuebler, adding the circumstances of Khadr's capture and the death of the other fighter may constitute war crimes.
The events could have provided U.S. soldiers with the motive to alter details to protect themselves, he wrote.
Kuebler alleges that an original report on the firefight written a day later by the commander for the Khost region of eastern Afghanistan, identified only as Lt.-Col. W, said the person who threw the grenade that killed Speer also died.
It was later doctored to say Speer's attacker was "engaged'' by U.S. forces, in a bid to make Khadr look guilty, said Kuebler -- a charge the military denies.
The prosecution acknowledges a memo was updated, but simply to "accurately reflect a fact known to all parties ... that contrary to what was initially believed to be the case, the accused survived his injuries in large part due to the medical attention provided by U.S. medics on July 27, 2002.''
In an interview, Kuebler said it's time the Canadian government take action on getting Khadr home because the prosecution's case is getting weaker all the time.
"We have another account that says it was a myth that Khadr alone was alive,'' said Kuebler.
The defence contends Khadr was abused so badly and in and such terrible medical shape that any damaging statements he made during early interrogations shouldn't be considered.
His chief interrogator for three months at the U.S. facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, identified as Sgt. Joshua Claus, has been given immunity from prosecution for any possible abuse of Khadr in return for his testimony at the Canadian's upcoming murder trial.
Claus was court-martialled and discharged from the army after another badly beaten prisoner at Bagram died in December 2002.
"We think Khadr's been mistreated in a variety of ways,'' said Kuebler. "However you characterize it, it was illegal.''
In an affidavit released earlier this week, Khadr said he was forced to confess to placate interrogators who shackled him for hours, dropped him and threatened him with rape.
Canadian officials who later visited him in Guantanamo told him he was lying about being innocent and said there was nothing they could do for him, said Khadr.
