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GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – Eight years after
he was taken to Guantanamo as a teenage prisoner, a Canadian pleaded
guilty Monday to killing a U.S. Army sergeant during a battle in
Afghanistan, in a deal that will send him home in a year to serve his
sentence.

Defenders say Omar Khadr, who was 15 at the time of
his capture, was a "child soldier" pushed into becoming an al-Qaida
fighter by his father, an associate of Osama bin Laden.

The plea deal ends a widely criticized trial that
made the United States the first Western nation since World War II to
prosecute a child offender for alleged war crimes. The exact terms were
not immediately disclosed, but Khadr's sentence was reportedly capped at
eight years, in addition to time already spent at the Guantanamo
detention camp.

The now 24-year-old prisoner, who was seriously
wounded when he was seized in a gunbattle in 2002, admitted to throwing a
grenade that killed a special forces medic during a fierce raid on an
al-Qaida compound. He also pleaded guilty to building and planting
roadside bombs and receiving weapons training from al-Qaida. He is the
last Western detainee at Guantanamo.

The Toronto-born Khadr's trial had been scheduled to start Monday and he faced a possible life sentence.

The chief military prosecutor, Navy Capt. John F.
Murphy, said the government welco... >>>