Omar Khadr Apologizes To Widow Of Soldier He Killed

Convicted Canadian war criminal Omar Khadr stood in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom Thursday and apologized directly to the widow of the American soldier he killed eight years ago.

Taking the stand to deliver an unsworn statement, Khadr also said his greatest wish was to get of prison and one day become a doctor.

“I’m really, really sorry for the pain I caused you and your family,” Khadr told Tabitha Speer, who hours earlier branded him a murderer.

“I wish I could do something that would take this pain away from you.”

Speer initially shook her head as he spoke, and then wept.

Khadr told his Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Col. Jon Jackson, that he had decided to plead guilty to war crimes “to take responsibility for the acts I’ve done.”

He outlined the injuries he had suffered in the firefight that led to the death of Sgt. 1st Class Chris Speer, a U.S. special forces medic.

The injuries included losing the sight in his left eye and a damaged right eye. He was shot twice in the back.

Khadr said he still has problems with his eyes and has been told he might eventually go blind as a result of his wounds.

“What would you like to do when you grow up, as they say?” Jackson asked.

Having experienced physical and emotional pain, Khadr responded that he wanted to be a doctor.

“I know what pain means,” Khadr said, speaking softly but clearly in English.

“I’d would really like to relieve a person who is suffering from such pain.”

Citing South African President Nelson Mandela, Khadr said he had learned that in prison he had much time to think about things.

As a result, he said, he had concluded there was no point carrying anger or hate in his heart.

“You’re not going to gain anything by it,” he said.

“Love, forgiveness are more constructive and bring people together.”

Khadr, 24, said he wanted to pursue his education and forge “true relationships,” something he said he had never experienced.

“That’s my biggest dream and biggest wish: to get out of this place.”

Khadr’s statement, which was not delivered under oath and cannot be cross-examined on, capped a day of high emotion in the court.

Earlier in the day, Speer looked Khadr squarely in the eye and lambasted him as a killer.

“You will forever be a murderer in my eyes — it doesn’t matter what you say — from this day on,” Speer said calmly but forcefully.

“You made a choice; my children have no choice.”

A fidgeting Khadr, in a dark suit and tie, kept his head bowed throughout, barely lifting his eyes to hers.

Some spectators in the courtroom wept as she testified.

Speer, who still keeps her husband’s cellphone so she can hear his voice on voicemail, was with her dying husband on the last days of his life in hospital in Germany.

She said she had promised her 3-1/2-year-old daughter Taryn she would be going to bring her dad home.

“I broke that promise,” she said.

She described telling Taryn later how her dad would not be coming home.

“She let out a scream,” she told the military commission court.

“A part of my daughter died with my husband.”

Now 11, Taryn still remembers her dad, she said, sharing his love of Elvis.

“Someone who is so unworthy stole all of this from her,” Speer said.

She read for the court a letter Taryn wrote, addressed to Khadr.

“I’m mad at you because of what you did to my family,” Speer quoted the letter as saying.

“You make me really sad. I’m mad at you because of that.”

“It took everything in my daughter to write this,” Speer said.

Speer, 29, a special forces medic, died 12 days after shrapnel hit him in the head during a raid on an Afghan compound in which Khadr and a terrorist cell was holed up in July 2002.

Khadr admitted on Monday to having thrown the grenade, and pleaded guilty to murdering the soldier in violation of the law of war.

“I heard over and over how he’s the victim, he’s the child,” Speer testified of Khadr, who was 15 at the time of his crimes.

“I don’t see that: the victims are my children, not you. They are the ones hurting.”

Her son, Tanner, who was 10 months old at the time, has no memories of his father. Now, eight, he, too, wrote a letter to Khadr recently which Speer read in court.

“Omar Khadr should go to jail because of the open hole he made in my family by killing my dad,” he wrote.

“Army rocks. Bad guys stink.”

Also testifying for the defence was Arlette Zinck, an associate professor of English at King’s University College in Edmonton.

Zinck said she had corresponded with Khadr, and would back his enrolment in the Christian school, if he applied for entry.

Navy Capt. Patrick McCarthy, who interacted extensively with Khadr in the detention camps of Guantanamo Bay, testified the detainee was always respectful and happy.

McCarthy, a senior staff lawyer in the camps between May 2006 and July 2008, said he came to believe Khadr could be rehabilitated.

“Mr. Khadr was a child,” McCarthy said.

“The fact that his father took him to become involved with the al-Qaida leads me to believe that he has rehabilitative potential.”

Khadr’s lawyers have said a deal was struck this week that would see him return to Canada after serving up to another year in U-S custody.<

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon reiterated Thursday that Canada was in no way involved in any plea deal reached between Khadr’s lawyers and prosecutors.<

Diplomatic notes on the proposed transfer to Canadian custody are to be released once the sentencing hearing is over.