Khadr's Guantanamo trial halted by lawyer's hospitalization

[unhappycamper]

Khadr's Guantanamo trial halted by lawyer's hospitalization
By Carol Rosenberg | Miami Herald
Posted on Thursday, August 12, 2010

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — Omar Khadr's lone defense attorney, an Army lieutenant colonel, collapsed in court Thursday and was taken away to a base hospital on a stretcher, halting the first day of the Canadian's war crimes trial.

Lt. Col. Jon Jackson was on a morphine drip at the Naval Station hospital being tested for complications from gall bladder surgery six weeks ago, said Pentagon deputy chief defense counsel Bryan Broyles.

At best, Broyles said, if the defender could be treated at this remote base, the trial could resume Monday.

At worst, he said, Jackson would need to be airlifted to the United States -- indefinitely delaying the first war crimes trial of the Obama administration.

"Omar Khadr has one attorney," Broyles said in an impromptu press conference in an old hangar below the courtroom, from which Jackson was whisked by base ambulance. "If the court has to wait for Lt. Col. Jackson, the court will have to wait for Lt. Col. Jackson."