Before reading this text, I thought child soldiers should always be pardoned for their actions, as they are very young and they were pressured into war. Now I realize it's a lot more complicated.
In this text, we meet a former child soldier named Omar Khadr. He has killed a US Army soldier and has gone to court over it. The sentence will send him to Guantanamo Bay, which is a very serious sentence.
The reason why Khadr became a child soldier is because his father was a senior ranking Al Qaeda leader. So he was influenced by his father to become one.
Is it OK for Khadr to go free? He was influenced to become a child soldier by his father, but he still has killed people.
This has influenced my view on child soldiers a lot. I think that child soldiers should get different punishments based on the different circumstances they're in. For example, a child soldier that joins the army when he's 9 years old should get a lesser punishment that a child soldier that joins when he's 16.
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