The Pentagon Tuesday announced a Nov. 10 war crimes trial date for alleged Canadian teen terrorist Omar Khadr, meaning the terror murder trial will follow both the U.S. and Canada's elections and likely straddle American Thanksgiving.

Khadr, 21, is accused of throwing a grenade in a July 2002 firefight near Khost, Afghanistan, that killed a U.S. commando while American forces were assaulting a suspected al Qaeda compound. Conviction could carry a life sentence.

Last week, his military judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish, canceled an earlier Oct. 8 trial date at a hearing in which defense and prosecution attorneys were still haggling over access to trial evidence and whether the government wouldpermit a private mental health examination of Khadr.

The Toronto-born scion of a radical Muslim family was 15 years old when he was captured in the July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan, where his father had earlier moved the family and sent his sons to al Qaeda paramilitary training.

Khadr turns 22 at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. sent him after his 16th birthday.

Across months of pretrial hearings his Pentagon lawyers have telegraphed a defense that could alternately argue he did not throw the grenade from inside a suspect al Qaeda compound, was a child soldier at the time and not responsible for whatever happened.

Also, lawyers are seeking U.S. government permission to have Khadr meet with civilian mental health experts to determine whether Khadr was suffering shock at the time the grenade was thrown because U.S. forces had in the same firefight dropped two 500-pound bombs on the compound.

Tuesday, a Defense Department spokesman, Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said the judge has set Nov. 5 for hearings on what evidence might be excluded from trial and a Nov. 10 trial date.

''Prosecutors anticipate it will take approximately two to three weeks to try this case,'' said Air Force Maj. Gail Crawford, a military attorney and war court spokeswoman.

The government, she said, could take five to eight days to present its side of the case.

If this summer's trial of Osama bin Laden's driver is any guide, the court could take a day to impanel a jury of U.S. military officers to hear the case and have attorneys for both sides make their opening arguments.

Witnesses testifying would likely include U.S. forces who were at the firefight, which took place in the ninth month of the American invasion of Afghanistan, as well as U.S. agents to relate what Khadr told interrogators from Afghanistan to Guantánamo.

Now, according to the war court calendar, the next Guantánamo captive to face trial is Ali Hamza al Bahlul, 39, of Yemen, who allegedly served as bin Laden's media secretary.

His judge, Air Force Col. Ronald Gregory, set an Oct. 27 trial date at a war court hearing last month.

During the hearing, Bahlul called the process ''a legal farce'' and asked to sit out the trial in his prison camp cell. He asked to be brought to the tribunal building at Guantánamo's Camp Justice for the verdict and any subsequent sentencing phase.

The Yemeni is accused of supporting terror as bin Laden's media secretary, sometime bodyguard and by producing al Qaeda ''propaganda products,'' notably pre-9/11 al Qaeda recruiting films.

Bahlul has instructed his Pentagon appointed lawyer, Air Force Reserve Maj. David Frakt, to offer no defense, meaning that trial could be complete before the U.S. elections on Nov. 4.

In Canada, meantime, the Khadr family has garnered no government sympathy in a campaign to have Omar Khadr repatriated. He is the lone captive with Western citizenship still held at Guantánamo.

And the topic has been barely mentioned ahead of Canada's Oct. 14 national elections in which Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is seeking to consolidate his party's power in parliament.

The U.S. presidential elections, however, could have an impact on the Guantánamo trials. Republican candidate John McCain supports them but said he would move the detainees from Guantánamo, meaning trials could be interrupted or held elsewhere.

The campaign of Democrat Barack Obama has said an Obama White House would prefer traditional federal trials or military courts martial, and would review each detainee's file to determine whether and where prosecution would be appropriate.

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