The Canadian Press - Mar 14, 2008

WASHINGTON — Human rights groups are incensed about a startling revelation this week that one of Canadian Omar Khadr's chief interrogators was a U.S. soldier involved in the horrific case of an Afghan prisoner who was tortured to death.

Sgt. Joshua Claus's name came out in a Guantanamo Bay courtroom on Thursday, a slip by the judge in Khadr's case that fuelled defence assertions he may have been coerced during interrogation sessions after his July 2002 capture in Afghanistan.

Fifteen soldiers from two different U.S. army units, including Claus, would later be charged after two prisoners died that December.

One was a young taxi driver, thought by most of the Americans to be innocent of terrorism, who was beaten so severely he couldn't bend his legs any more before he died.

Claus pleaded guilty in September 2005 to maltreatment and assault of the man, known only as Dilawar, at the Bagram airfield detention centre outside Kabul. He was sentenced to five months in jail.

...

Claus's involvement with Khadr is doubly troubling, said defence lawyer Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler, because the Canadian was just 15 years old and severely wounded in the firefight in which a U.S. Special Forces soldier was killed.

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