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By COLIN PERKEL
The Canadian Press

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TORONTO - Despite Prime Minister Stephen Harper's assertion that Omar Khadr should be tried for war crimes in the United States, the American military lawyer who will defend the Canadian citizen at trial said Wednesday he doesn't believe justice will be done.

In a wide-ranging interview, Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler attacked the military commission that will try Khadr in October on charges he killed an American medic in Afghanistan when he was just 15.

"He's not going to get a fair trial," Kuebler told The Canadian Press from his office in Washington, D.C.

"Military commissions aren't designed to be fair. They're designed to produce convictions."

Harper could pre-empt the hearing by asking Washington to send Khadr - Guantanamo Bay's lone western detainee and also its youngest - back to Canada, Kuebler said.

"I hope that the prime minister of Canada finally decides to stand up and act like a prime minister of Canada and protect the rights of a Canadian citizen."

Kuebler said a new blast of publicity surrounding Khadr's case, spawned by last week's court-ordered release of intelligence information and Tuesday's jailhouse interrogation video, should prompt Harper to act.

Harper, however, has been dismissive of calls to intercede in the case.

"Mr. Khadr is accused of very serious things," the prime minister said last week.

"There is a legal process in the United States. He can make his arguments in that process."

Calls to the prime minister's office Wednesday were not immediately returned.

Last week, U.S. intelligence information made public under Canadian court order showed Khadr was deprived of sleep and subjected to other abuse. Kuebler said the new information bothered him "greatly."

On Tuesday, video of a then-16-year-old Khadr under interrogation by Canada's spy service in a cell at Guantanamo Bay was shown around the world.

Kuebler said anyone who watched Khadr whimpering for his mother and still believed he had vowed to die fighting with a bunch of hardened al Qaida terrorists is "crazy."

Sgt. Layne Morris, who was blinded in the July 2002 firefight that left Sgt. Chris Speer dead, was adamant Khadr was an incorrigible terrorist and the video of his crying should elicit no sympathy.

"He's disappointed and discouraged that he's alive and he's in the hands of coalition forces instead of in paradise with 72 virgins," Morris said from Portland, Ore.

"He waited until the troops got close enough that he could throw a hand grenade.

"That was the hand grenade (that) killed Chris Speer."