A young Canadian defendant fired most of his squabbling lawyers during a court session before the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay on Monday. Omar Khadr told the military judge he could no longer trust his Pentagon-appointed defense lawyers who had been fighting for months.  

"They've been accusing each other and pointing fingers at each other ... I want to erase all of them," said Khadr, who is accused of killing a US soldier with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan seven years ago.
 
His lawyers would not discuss specifics but said they disagree on what is in Khadr's best interest. The judge let Khadr fire all. But one of them has to stay until his Canadian advisers can help him choose a permanent replacement.
 
Khadr was 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan and 16 when sent to the detention camp on the US Navy base in Cuba. He is now a 22-year-old with a short bushy beard and faces life imprisonment if convicted for murder and conspiring with al Qaeda.
 
Khadr was first charged in 2005. But the charges have been dropped and refilled several times as the court itself has been dissolved and reincarnated to address legal challenges. Fairness issues that critics have called insurmountable.
 
"It's not the first unfairness I'm going through," Khadr replies. "I'm expecting more unfairness."
 
No new trial date has been set and the Obama administration has not announced whether Khadr will stay in the military tribunal system. But the judge, Army Colonel Patrick Parrish, warned Khadr that switching lawyers would not necessarily win him further delays.
 
While that dispute played out at a hilltop courtroom at Guantanamo, a US judge in Washington ruled that the government cannot keep secret the unclassified evidence that it says justifies the continued imprisonment of more than 100 Guantanamo Bay prisoners.
 
Chinese protest
And in another part of the Guantanamo camp, a group of prisoners who have been ordered freed by the US courts held an impromptu news conference to express their frustration. The Chinese Muslim captives, known as Uighurs, use newly issued sketchbooks and art supplies to make a book of protest signs.
 
"We are the Uighurs being oppressed in prison though we had been announced innocent according to the verdict of court," one page said. "We need to freedom," read one poorly spelled sign.
 
The US acknowledges that the 17 Uighurs pose no threat. But Washington will not send them to China because it believes they will be persecuted there.

Obama has been deluged with criticism with his decision to keep the widely criticized Guantanamo tribunals, especially after announcing he would move some foreign terrorism suspects to maximum security prisons in the US.