Hearing begins for Canadian detainee

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Defense attorneys planned to use age as an argument for the release of a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen and the son of a former financier for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, was 15 when U.S. forces seized him on an Afghan battlefield in July 2002, Canwest News Service reported.

Canwest said attorneys for Khadr would cite a 1758 case in which a London court ordered the British army to hand over a young man accused of desertion on grounds that minors can't be soldiers.

They were also expected to argue that international law prohibits the trial of children as war criminals.

The lawyers charge the U.S. Congress never intended military commissions to try child soldiers because it made no provisions for rehabilitating them.

The United States ratified a U.N. protocol calling for the rehabilitation of child soldiers and has given education support to former child soldiers in Afghanistan.