If Prime Minister Stephen Harper needs an excuse to demand that Omar Khadr be freed from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, he has it now. The Pentagon has just released information that shows that Khadr was not the only fighter who might have killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan five years ago. Someone else might have done it.

For Canadians concerned about Khadr's fate at the hands of a discredited military trial process, this is the last straw.

At a hearing at Guantanamo this week, Pentagon officials mistakenly handed reporters the transcript of revealing testimony from an American soldier or security agent who was at the battle in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002, in which Khadr, then 15, allegedly threw a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer. The U.S. witness says he believes Khadr threw the grenade, but didn't see him do it. There was another fighter on the scene, who was shot dead after the grenade was thrown.

Whatever U.S. military judges may make of this report, which was known to Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, Khadr's military lawyer, the Pentagon looks bad trying to keep it from the public.

"There's no openness about this process," Kuebler rightly says.


There is also huge embarrassment to Canada because of Harper's refusal to intervene. If convicted, Khadr faces up to life in prison for an act he committed as a youth, under the influence of his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an alleged Al Qaeda founder and financier.

The United Nations special representative for children in armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, has taken up Khadr's case. So have the Canadian Bar Association, British legal experts, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Church and other groups. The French government, admirably, has urged Washington to regard Khadr as a minor who deserves consideration because of his age. The American Civil Liberties Union has called the military tribunals "a mockery" of justice. Countries such as Britain and Australia have sprung their citizens from Guantanamo.

Yet Harper refuses to bestir himself.

As the Star has written before, Khadr is a poor poster boy for human rights. But he is a Canadian citizen who faces a military tribunal that does not meet American or Canadian standards of criminal justice.

If convicted in Canada even of planned, deliberate murder, under the Youth Criminal Justice Act Khadr would have faced no more than six years in custody. By July 27, he will have spent six years in the Guantanamo brig. In Canadian terms, he will have served a full sentence for a crime for which he has not yet been tried, much less convicted.

This is indecent. Few Canadians have sympathy for Khadr and his family. But what is happening in Guantanamo is not justice. It is vindictiveness. And the Harper government's acquiescence is profoundly disturbing. Before Canada suffers yet more embarrassment, Khadr should be shipped back home, under a bond to keep the peace.