Harper is not bound.

Certainly Harper is not bound by the former Liberal policy. That policy was obviously wrong and certainly did not comment a Conservative government to follow the same path. Indeed, the Liberals now have changed, having realised the error of their ways, and perhaps because they are now in opposition!
This article does not notice the strangeness of the charges given that the U.S. forces were attacking the compound where Khadr with other jihadists were located. Combatants in a war are not usually charged with murder for defending themselves when attacked! Murder charges are possible only because of the Orwellian concept of unlawful enemy combatant! Such combatants do not apparently have any rights that ordinary soldiers would have in this situation either to be protected by the Geneva conventions or to defend themselves.
The article also neglects to mention that recently evidence has come to light that the grenade involved was a U.S. grenade and hence the death of the U.S. soldier might have been the result of friendly fire.


Harper is not bound
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
July 22, 2008 at 8:02 AM EDT
Like most prime ministers, Stephen Harper has had few qualms about reversing his predecessors' policies. But when it comes to Omar Khadr, Mr. Harper acts as if he cannot deviate from the previous government's position.
The Conservatives have resorted to the always suspect they-did-it-first defence, in refusing to intervene on behalf of Mr. Khadr, the only citizen of a Western country still held at Guantanamo Bay. "This is the process the Liberals chose, and we're sticking with it," Mr. Harper's communications director, Kory Teneycke, told The Globe this past weekend. Having themselves accepted American assurances that Mr. Khadr was being treated fairly, Mr. Teneycke said, the Liberals are guilty of "revisionism and hypocrisy" in now calling for his return to Canada.
If so, why should that have any bearing on Mr. Khadr's current fate? However much the Liberals knew or should have known about his mistreatment at the time - including sleep deprivation before interrogation - the circumstances around his case have changed dramatically in the six years he has been in custody.
The world is no longer in the state of panic that followed Sept. 11, 2001. Other countries have recognized that the United States cannot indefinitely hold their citizens without proper representation or due process, which is why Britain, Australia and Germany have fought for their repatriation. And none of those cases involved a minor (and arguably a child soldier), as Mr. Khadr was at the time of his capture.
The courts, meanwhile, have been increasingly critical of the treatment of Mr. Khadr and other Guantanamo prisoners. Most significantly, the U.S. Supreme Court last month weakened the military commission system by which Mr. Khadr is to be tried, ruling that terror suspects can fight for their rights in civilian courts. Two months earlier, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Mr. Khadr's protections under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were violated when CSIS agents passed on the results of their interviews with him at Guantanamo to U.S. authorities.
Finally, there are the actual charges against Mr. Khadr. Until recently, it was assumed he had killed a U.S. soldier with a grenade during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. But a witness account released earlier this year, amid allegations that it had been covered up by American military officials, raised the possibility that it was another al-Qaeda fighter who committed the act. While Mr. Khadr has in no way been cleared, there is now a significant doubt about his guilt.
The Liberals should have done more for Mr. Khadr, as former prime minister Paul Martin admitted in a recent television interview. But since they can no longer rectify their mistake, that task now falls to the Conservatives