Omar Khadr, 21, faces trial as an adult later this year at a military commission at the remote Navy base in southeast Cuba. Pretrial hearings are scheduled for next week.
Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was captured in Afghanistan in July 2002 and was transferred to the detention center once he turned 16. He is accused of the grenade killing of a U.S. Army medic during a firefight.
If convicted, he could face confinement for life.
French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani said France considers that ``all children associated with an armed conflict . . . should be treated accordingly.''
''As a minor at the time of the events, Mr. Khadr must be given special treatment -- a point on which there is a universal consensus,'' Andreani said in an online briefing Wednesday.
Khadr is expected to be one of the first Guantánamo detainees to actually go on trial. Only one man has been convicted at a commission -- Australian David Hicks, a self-confessed al Qaeda foot soldier who pleaded guilty to providing material support to terror and is free in his homeland after a nine-month prison sentence.
The military has said it plans to prosecute about 90 of the 275 men held as ''enemy combatants'' at the Pentagon's prison camps.
