• Gitmo's youngest and last Western detainee returned to Canada

    Reuters

    Omar Khadr is seen at left in an undated family handout photo and in the most recent artist rendering from a courtroom.

    By NBC News staff and wire services

    A one-time teen al-Qaida fighter who was also Guantanamo Bay’s youngest prisoner and last Westerner has been transferred to his native Canada on Saturday, the Canadian government confirmed.


    Canadian Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Omar Khadr, 26, was flown from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Saturday on a U.S. government plane and transferred to Millhaven maximum-security prison in Bath, Ontario.

    Khadr's case has been controversial both in Canada and abroad given his age when he was captured, the nature of his detention and hearing, and the reluctance of Canadian officials to accept his return.

    "I am satisfied the Correctional Service of Canada can administer Omar Khadr’s sentence in a manner which recognizes the serious nature of the crimes that he has committed and ensure the safety of Canadians is protected during incarceration,” Toews said.

    A U.S. war crimes tribunal in 2010 sentenced Khadr to 40 years in prison, although he was expected to serve just a few more years under a deal that included his admission he was an al-Qaida conspirator who murdered a U.S. soldier.

    Khadr was 15 when he was captured in 2002 in Afghanistan, and has spent a decade at Guantanamo, the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

    Khadr admitted planting 10 roadside bombs in Afghanistan as part of an al-Qaida cell and throwing a grenade that killed an American special forces medic, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer of Albuquerque, N.M.

    Over a decade since the war began, TODAY's Lester Holt visits the battlefields outside Kandahar Province and the Horn of Panjwai to see where things stand.

    Khadr was the first person since World War II to be prosecuted in a war crimes tribunal for acts committed as a juvenile. He was the youngest prisoner still at Guantanamo, but younger boys were previously held there.

    Khadr, born in Toronto, was taken to Afghanistan by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, himself a senior al-Qaida member and confidant of Osama Bin Laden.

    Bin Laden apprenticed the boy to a group of bomb makers who opened fire when U.S. troops came to their compound. Khadr was captured in the firefight, during which he was blinded in one eye and shot twice in the back.

    In a written statement, Toews said Canada received Khadr's application for transfer from the United States on April 13. He said U.S. officials assured Canada it would receive a videocopy of an interview with Khadr, but it, along with other videos of interviews and unedited reports, was not sent until this month.

    Former Canadian Ambassador Gar Pardy, however, said Canada's Conservative government -- which cultivates an image of being tough on crime -- dragged out the transfer.

    "I think the government was mainly very mean-spirited in how it handled the case," Pardy said to CTV News.

    Toews said he continues to be concerned that Khadr "idealizes" his father and denies Ahmed Khadr's association with al-Qaida. The Canadian public safety minister said he is also troubled by how "radicalized" Khadr has become from his time in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Guantanamo Bay.

    Girls in Afghanistan were not allowed to attend school under Taliban rule, but now millions of girls across the country attend classes. It's a dramatic social change the Taliban is still fighting. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    “From the age of 15 to 26, he has been in some kind of jail, incarcerated. He has had no normal adolescent development at all,” CBC’s Susan Ormiston told CBC News.

    Khadr's defense team and human rights groups had argued he was a "child soldier" who should have been sent home long ago for rehabilitation and challenged the notion that a battlefield killing amounted to a war crime.

    Khadr was prohibited under the deal from calling witnesses at his sentencing hearing that would support defense claims that he was a "child soldier," forced into fighting the U.S. by a radical father who was an associate of bin Laden.

    Khadr's sentence will expire on Oct. 30, 2018.

    The U.S. Department of Defense also confirmed Saturday that it transferred Khadr to Canada, leaving 166 detainees at Guantanamo.

    In the 2008 presidential election campaign, President Barack Obama promised to close the Guantanamo prison during his term, but that pledge has gone unfulfilled amid security concerns and opposition from Congress, which enacted laws making it more difficult to transfer prisoners from Guantanamo.

    Reuters contributed to this report. 

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  • Forecast for your Twitter timeline: Sunny with a chance of 'Thanks, Jack Bauer'

    By Elizabeth Chuck, msnbc.com

    Heads up: Your Twitter timeline might be a bit overwhelming today.

    Last night, traffic on the site spiked to more than 4,000 tweets per second during President Obama’s speech announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, according to Twitter’s official PR account. “9/11 widow on my flight. In tears. Comforted by entire cabin. Life altering event to see,” read one of those tweets. Meanwhile, on the ground, there were Twitpics of passengers in the baggage claim area of JFK glued to the TV while Obama spoke and FDNY firefighters celebrating in Times Square; word being spread of spontaneous gatherings all over the country; and – of course – Photoshopped tributes to mark the occasion (please refer to this image of of Lady Liberty gripping bin Laden’s severed head and this one of Obama riding a unicorn while rainbows emanate from his hands).

    But Obama isn’t the only one getting credit. “Let's all take this time to thank the one person who no doubt was behind the killing of Osama bin Laden: Jack Bauer,” tweeted one person. The fictional “24” hero quickly rose to a trending topic on Twitter. Other accolades included “Nice job with the whole Osama thing” and one woman first professing her love to Mr. Bauer, followed by “We couldn’t have done it without” him.

    Uh… Kidding, right? We’ll just assume she’s taking that joke really far.

    The celebration extended beyond bin Laden’s death: “Well, at least this’ll put an end to f’in Royal Wedding talk,” said one person. “A prince gets married, the bad guy is dead. It’s a real Disney weekend here on earth,” posted another. 

    Then there’s the man who lives in the Pakistani town where Osama was killed who accidentally tweeted the news after hearing a loud bang: “Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it,” @ReallyVirtual later tweeted. Hours  - and apparently multiple media inquiries – later, he tweeted, “Bin Laden is dead. I didn’t kill him. Please let me sleep now.”

    And what live event would be complete without a little snark? Viewers and readers everywhere were more than happy to point out which news organizations confused "Osama" and "Obama" in their headlines - and which sites just made typos, period (Fox News "Confriming that Usama Bin Landen" is dead still gets the message across, don't you agree?).

    For a timeline of how it all unfolded on Twitter, click here.

    For moments when you need the Internet equivalent of a pinch to make sure you're not dreaming, click on IsOsamaBinLadenDead.com.

  • 'Justice,' but 'more work to do,' says kin of 9/11 victim

    Bob Sullivan / msnbc.com

    Crowds rejoice in front of the White House.

     

    By Bob Sullivan, Msnbc.com reporter

    Outside the White House, a crowd of thousands gathered, waving U.S. flags, chanting “USA,” singing the national anthem, and a tune familiar to sports fans -- "na, na, na, na, hey, hey, good-bye."

    The crowd was mostly college students, but as the news spread, nearby D.C. residents jammed the plaza just north of the White House.

    Among the crowd was Monica Lawson, whose sister Cecelia Lawson Richards died on 9/11 in the Pentagon. She was watching TV with her daughter Courtney (below, right) - the victim's niece - when she heard the news. They left their suburban D.C. carried a large portrait of Cecelia to the gates of the White House. 

    "I was like, what? Then it started to sink in," Courtney said. "I'm happy. Justice was done. But there is more work to do." 

    Editor's note: Msnbc's Rachel Maddow is in the crowd outside the White House. The MaddowBlog has a growing collection of photos from the scene. See Rachel's Twitter feed for more.  

    Bob Sullivan/msnbc.com