The case of Omar Khadr — the only Canadian being held at a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay — attracted international attention Sunday after CBS's 60 Minutes aired his story on American television.

Khadr was arrested in July 2002 when he was 15, and later charged with murder for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. medic in Afghanistan. He is also charged with spying, conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

Omar Khadr is shown in a 2002 photo at age 15, around the time he was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
(Canadian Press)

The TV show couldn't get an interview with Khadr, 21, who remains behind bars in Guantanamo, Cuba, where more than 300 prisoners are also being held.

But producers of 60 Minutes interviewed retired Maj.-Gen. John Altenburg, the American military lawyer who recommended a war-crimes trial for Khadr. He told the show that at least some of the evidence against Khadr is circumstantial.

"I think it's fair to say that no person saw him actually throw the grenade," he said.

But Altenburg added that there was evidence that Khadr was fighting alongside people from al-Qaeda. That evidence includes never-before-seen video of Khadr allegedly building a bomb in Afghanistan. The footage apparently came from a tape discovered in the rubble of the Afghan compound where Khadr was found barely alive five years ago.

Prosecutors in Khadr's case have described such evidence before, but it has never been seen publicly or in any court proceeding until now.

The show also interviewed Khadr's family, including one brother, Abdul Karim Khadr, who was paralyzed from the waist down in the same shootout with Pakistani forces near the Afghanistan border that killed his father, Ahmed Said Khadr. The father was accused of being a founding member and financier of al-Qaeda.

"I told my father just give me a belt and I'll blow myself up," he told 60 Minutes shortly after his return to Toronto in 2004. "I'll go and just do anything." 

In the same interview, he also said that he believed Omar would get out of Guantanamo and get even.

But now three years later, Omar's brother and his family have changed their tune. Khadr's mother, Maha Khadr, said she just wants Omar to come home alive.

"I pray that he's just … I see him alive standing in front of me," she said.

Earlier this month, a judge in Guantanamo Bay postponed a decision on whether Khadr will be subject to a war-crimes tribunal.

The judge recessed the pre-trial hearing without addressing whether Khadr is an "unlawful enemy combatant." That's a critical designation required by the U.S. Congress if the trial is ever to proceed after two years of fits and starts.

With files from the Canadian Press