In a brief e-mail message circulated Thursday afternoon, Military Commissions chief judge, Colonel Ralph Kohlmann, announced that Colonel Peter Brownback, who has served until now as the judge in the Khadr case, is to be replaced by another colonel, Patrick Parrish.
Defence officials in Washington told The Globe and Mail that Col. Brownback had been planning to retire. However, it was not clear why the judge would retire in the middle of an ongoing military tribunal case.
Mr. Khadr's U.S. military defence lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler, said the sudden change of judge comes after a recent commission hearing in which Col. Brownback “threatened to suspend proceedings in the case of Omar Khadr if prosecutors continued to withhold key evidence from Omar's lawyers.”
An undated photo of Omar Khadr, who has now spent a quarter of his life detained at Guantanamo Bay prison camp. (Reuters)
Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler added that Col. Brownback said at the time he had been “badgered and beaten and bruised by Major Groharing since the 7th of November, to set a trial date.”
Col. Brownback had often sided with the defence on issues of what evidence should be disclosed to Mr. Khadr's lawyers. But he has also sided with the prosecution on several issues, including most recently denying a defence motion to dismiss charges against Mr. Khadr because of his age at the time of his alleged offences – a ruling that went a long way towards clearing the way for Mr. Khadr's trial to finally begin.
Mr. Khadr was 15 when he was captured after a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. His Canadian and U.S. defence lawyers – along with myriad human rights and legal groups and Canadian opposition politicians have said he should be treated as a child soldier and not besubjected to the U.S. military commissions system in Guantanamo Bay.
Mr. Khadr faces several charges stemming from the Afghanistan firefight, including murder. Now 21, he faces the prospect of life in prison if convicted.
Last June, Col. Brownback dismissed the Khadr case, saying he lacked jurisdiction to try Mr. Khadr because the accused hadn't been declared an “unlawful” enemy combatant.
But a military review panel later decided Col. Brownback has the authority after all to try Mr. Khadr. He had been overseeing the case's number of pretrial motions ever since.