Canadian teenager Omar Khadr, who has been held in isolation at a U.S. prison camp in Cuba since October 2002, is scheduled to appear before a U.S. military court on Wednesday.

Few have been allowed to see Khadr, 19, who is all but blind in one eye and has previously gone on hunger strikes along with dozens of others detained at Guantanamo Bay.

A member of a Toronto family with alleged links to Osama bin Laden, he is expected to enter a plea this week on charges relating to a deadly battle in Afghanistan in July 2002 when he was just 15 years old.

Although cameras are not permitted in the heavily guarded Guantanamo hearing room, Khadr's lawyers and a pool of international journalists will be allowed to attend.

It will be the first time outsiders will be able to see Canada's only detainee, who faces charges of murder, attempted murder and various conspiracy offences.

Khadr's lawyers contend he is the victim of constant interrogation and torture. They say his case will set a dangerous precedent as the first hearing in modern history for war crimes allegedly committed by a juvenile.

The military commission Khadr faces is itself on trial in the United States, where the Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments that U.S. President George Bush's system for foreign terror suspects outstrips the boundaries of lawful confinement and due process.

Khadr is one of only nine among some 500 detainees to be formally charged at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in eastern Cuba, a place Amnesty International has characterized as a Gulag of our times, reminiscent of Soviet concentration camps.

Grenade

The U.S. military says Khadr admitted throwing a grenade that killed U.S. medic Christopher Speer and injured others fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan.

Authorities also contend the youth attended an al Qaeda training camp in Kabul, planted landmines against U.S. forces in the mountains and conducted surveillance of American convoy movements.

Charged in November with murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and aiding the enemy, Khadr faces life in prison after U.S. authorities said they wouldn't seek the death penalty.

American soldier Layne Morris, who lost an eye in the firefight and won a default judgement against the estate of Khadr's dead father, has said the teen killed one of two medics on hand that day.

The other medic, he said, saved the boy's life after he'd been shot three times.

'Mistreatment'

His U.S. lawyers, who contend Khadr has been denied adequate medical treatment and left bound in uncomfortable stress positions until he soiled himself, have visited briefly five times since the summer of 2004.

Canadian lawyer Dennis Edney, like the youth's family, has only exchanged letters with him but says he believes the youth has been severely mistreated.

"We only have Omar's words," he told the Canadian Press. "But they are consistent with the allegations of other individuals. They can't be made up."

Canadian intelligence officers interrogated Khadr twice before Edney got a court order to stop them last summer.

There have also been two so-called "welfare" visits this year, in March and mid-December, from Foreign Affairs officials concerned about widespread reports of mistreatment at the prison camp, department spokesman Rodney Moore told CP.

"In each case, he seemed fine," said Moore, adding he couldn't say more about the youth's condition because of the Privacy Act.

Canada is barred from providing normal consular services as Guantanamo detainees are considered enemy combatants and aren't protected by the Geneva Convention, he added.

Khadr was charged as an "unprivileged belligerent." The United States doesn't recognize Taliban or al Qaeda members as authorized to legally conduct combat under the international rules of war, so they can be charged with murder.

Most prisoners were taken during fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan just after the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

Khadr's lawyers contend there's significant difference of opinion about what actually happened at the alleged al Qaeda compound near Khost on July 27, 2002, when the teen reportedly jumped out from hiding after a fierce gun battle and threw the grenade.

They insist the teen shouldn't even be held at Guantanamo.

In a letter last month pleading for United Nations intervention in the case, Washington lawyers Muneer Ahmad and Richard Wilson noted that most children at the base were placed in comfortable quarters before they were eventually released to their families by early 2003.

Yet Khadr, who had turned 16 by the time he arrived at Guantanamo in October 2002, was treated as an adult and abused, they said.

Trying him for crimes committed as a juvenile violates international protections for children, argued the two lawyers, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

They've found no record of a trial for a juvenile under the age of 18 for war crimes in any tribunal beginning with Nuremberg after the Second World War, including those for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and East Timor.

"I can't think why they've decided to go against this young kid," Barbara Olshansky at the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York, told the Canadian Press.

"It's horrifying. What does this say about who we are?"

In December, Khadr's lawyers applied for a stay in proceedings pending word from the Supreme Court on the military tribunal process, but they didn't expect a decision before Wednesday's hearing.

And in a recent letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, the lawyers charged that Canada's failure to take a stand amounts to "acquiescing" to an illegal process.

The Pentagon maintains the military tribunals provide for full and fair trials while protecting national security.

But critics say they're a far cry from civilian criminal trials or even regular military court proceedings. They say commission rules favour military prosecutors, allow evidence to be obtained through torture and hearsay and don't permit an independent judicial review.

Clarification of Canada's position is essential, said Khadr's lawyers, especially given the recent arrest of his older brother Abdullah, 24, and his expected extradition to the United States for trial on charges of gun-running and conspiring to kill Americans abroad.

"If a military commission is inappropriate for Abdullah, then surely it is inappropriate for Omar as well."

Khadr family

The Khadr family has provoked intense debate in Canada. The family patriarch, Ahmed Said, believed to be a close associate of bin Laden's, was killed in a gun battle with U.S.-led coalition forces in Pakistan in October 2003.

One son, Karim, was paralyzed in the incident and returned to Canada with his mother in April 2004 to get medical treatment.

Another brother, Abdurahman, was once detained at Guantanamo but was released and went back to Canada.