This is from the Globe and Mail. Other articles have pointed out much more clearly that the interrogation itself was illegal. In spite of the pleas of Canadian lawyers and being the only country not to intervene on behalf of its citizens imprisoned in Guantanamo Harper does nothing. Canada has reduced itself to the level of the U.S. That is not compliment. Fortunately, there are still many in the U.S. and Canada who recognise the irony of two countries who claim that they stand for human rights nevertheless supporting a legal process which resembles the Star Chambers of old. It is fortunate that we still have some legal basis to challenge the government. The U.S. lawyers for Khadr have also done excellent work on his behalf. Whether it will make any difference at all is in some doubt. When the process failed the U.S. earlier and charges were thrown out because the accused had not been shown to be enemy combatants the authorities just rewrote the script.
Top court questions Ottawa's motive on Khadr file
Justices pepper federal government on how and why it passed on sensitive information to U.S. prosecutors
KIRK MAKIN
JUSTICE REPORTER
March 27, 2008
OTTAWA -- The federal government's motives in the Omar Khadr terrorism case came under sustained fire from the Supreme Court of Canada yesterday, as a government lawyer sought to justify its suppression of evidence.
Observers in the packed courtroom had barely settled into their seats for the historic case, when several judges began to pepper Justice Department lawyer Robert Frater with questions as to how and why sensitive information was passed on to U.S. prosecutors.
They challenged Mr. Frater to reveal whether Canada sought restrictions on how the United States could use the information - gleaned during three interrogations that Canadian security agents held with Mr. Khadr in 2002.
"Obviously it was shared for a purpose," Mr. Justice Ian Binnie pressed Mr. Frater. "You are the one who knew how it was shared, and whether there were restrictions."
Mr. Khadr was captured by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002, when he was 15. He was charged with murdering U.S. Army Sergeant Christopher Speer by throwing a hand grenade, and has been held in the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since October of 2002.
Bolstered by legal intervenors, Mr. Khadr's defence team is trying to show that he was illegally interrogated, and that his responses became the underpinning for the charges.
In one of several harsh indictments of the government yesterday, B.C. Civil Liberties Association lawyer Joseph Arvay said the affair is a "classic case" of why the courts must come to the aid of unpopular citizens abandoned by their government.
"We are dealing with an individual who is in this black hole in Guantanamo Bay; for whom the U.S. political process doesn't work; who may be seen in Canada as a pariah; and for whom the Canadian political process doesn't work," Mr. Arvay said.
Mr. Frater insisted that the interrogation was a routine security procedure, and that it would be an unwarranted leap of logic to assume that it played a role in the U.S. decision to prosecute.
But several judges prodded him to explain the way the information was passed to the United States - rather than making the Khadr defence team and the court itself try to guess what took place.
"The issue is: Did it have an impact on the prosecution?" Madam Justice Rosalie Abella told Mr. Frater.
"Here you have an opportunity to tell us," Mr. Justice Morris Fish said. "It is not too late. If there is information the court needs - or to put it less urgently, ought to have - I don't understand your concern about giving evidence. Counsel, over the years, have many times given admissions of fact."
But Mr. Frater insisted, "I would be committing exactly the same sin I've accused the other side of committing - going outside the court record to give evidence."
Mr. Frater portrayed Canada as being little more than a bystander in the case. He said that if Mr. Khadr wants to obtain transcripts of his interrogation - information he ought to have no trouble remembering, anyway - then he should request it in the U.S. court system.
Mr. Frater also argued that ordering the disclosure of evidence to Mr. Khadr would create a dangerous precedent that would enable any Canadian charged abroad to make disclosure demands.
In a submission for the Criminal Lawyers Association, lawyer John Norris said the government cannot shirk its responsibilities under the Charter of Rights just because its officials are outside the border.
"Whether or not Canadian officials took the Charter with them when they went to Guantanamo Bay, it was undoubtedly waiting for them when they got home," he told the court.
After the court reserved its decision in the appeal, Dennis Edney, a lawyer for Mr. Khadr, told reporters that the entire case has begun to unravel as more information seeps out involving alleged torture Mr. Khadr suffered and the unreliability of the evidence against him.
"What does it take for our government to right this wrong?" he asked.
Mr. Edney said that part of the problem Mr. Khadr faces is public outrage over pro-al-Qaeda statements from his family members in the past.
"It's a shame that Omar Khadr should suffer because of his family ... and that Canadians can't distinguish between a man suffering in horrible conditions in Guantanamo Bay and family members who say stupid things."
Showing posts with label Harper position on Guantanamo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harper position on Guantanamo. Show all posts
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Picking and choosing who to help.
Stockwell Day is in Saudi Arabia hoping to persuade Saudi authorities to revoke the beheading sentence imposed on a Canadian citizen. In the case of another Canadian in the U.S. the Conservative government would not even pick up the phone to ask for leniency.
While Stockwell Day is pleading on behalf of a convicted murderer in Saudi Arabia government lawyers were in court trying to prevent Omar Khadr's lawyers from obtaining information that might help in his defence. While France, as well as Canadian lawyers, have spoken up in Khadr's defence the government has been wholly silent.
The article on the Saudi Arabia case is at CBC. I support Day's attempt to have the Saudi conviction overturned but the Conservative government should also have requested clemency in the case of the Canadian convicted in Montana and sentenced to death. In the Khadr case, Canada is in effect an international pariah. Every other western country has intervened on behalf of any of its nationals imprisoned at Guantanamo. Added to this is the fact that Khadr was still a child when imprisoned.
While Stockwell Day is pleading on behalf of a convicted murderer in Saudi Arabia government lawyers were in court trying to prevent Omar Khadr's lawyers from obtaining information that might help in his defence. While France, as well as Canadian lawyers, have spoken up in Khadr's defence the government has been wholly silent.
The article on the Saudi Arabia case is at CBC. I support Day's attempt to have the Saudi conviction overturned but the Conservative government should also have requested clemency in the case of the Canadian convicted in Montana and sentenced to death. In the Khadr case, Canada is in effect an international pariah. Every other western country has intervened on behalf of any of its nationals imprisoned at Guantanamo. Added to this is the fact that Khadr was still a child when imprisoned.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Omar Khadr: A most peculair young offender
There is no political mileage in this for Harper. Just perusing the responses on any article on Khadr one finds that the majority of posts are quite unsympathetic. The Khadr family is a known terrorist family and many would like to revoke their Canadian citizenship or exile them to Antarctica!
Even this article ignores the fact that Khadr was probably subjected to torture that would make much of the evidence against him inadmissible in any ordinary court. Of course Guanatanamo is a blot on the legal landscape but even so his U.S. military lawyer has shown a great deal of courage given his situation. We now know that there was another person alive at the scene who could have thrown the grenade but he was summarily executed -a war crime? We know that one of Khadr's interrogators was court martialed for mistreating suspects and sentenced to several months in jail. We know that he was subject to waterboarding. We know that the record of events was altered.
But Harper is not about to challeng the U.S. justice system. A Canadian sentenced to death in the U.S. got no sympathy from Harper. Of course a Canadian accused in Mexico is different, or in Saudi Arabia, or in China. But the U.S. system even in Guantanamo or when applying the death penalty is a model for Harper.
Omar Khadr: A most peculiar young offender
He should be dealt with here in Canada, as a juvenile who was involved in terrorism
SEAN FINE
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
March 22, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT
The civilized world condemns the recruitment of child soldiers. Yet Canada sits quietly by as one of its citizens, Omar Khadr, is prosecuted by the United States for war crimes he allegedly committed at age 15 as a member of al-Qaeda.
It is impossible to square. Al-Qaeda's recruitment of child soldiers is immoral and abusive; consequently, it is immoral and abusive to prosecute as a war criminal a child recruited by al-Qaeda, and punish him accordingly. We can't have it both ways.
Lately, it has dawned on Canadians that the United States may well have lied about its evidence against Mr. Khadr. Far from having proof that only he could have thrown the grenade that killed their soldier, the U.S. appears to have hidden the truth: that the teenage Canadian was in the company of an adult al-Qaeda fighter and was himself unarmed, on his knees and facing away from battle when a U.S. soldier shot him twice — in the back.
But the falsehoods are only part of the reasons why Canadians let the 15-year-old disappear six years ago into the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which he had no access to a lawyer for the first 27 months and no way to contest his detention. Canadians accepted that Mr. Khadr be held fully responsible for his actions. As if he were an adult.
The irony has never really penetrated Canadians' consciousness. Canada, the country of the liberal Youth Criminal Justice Act, is the only Western nation to give the United States carte blanche with one of its nationals at Guantanamo. Britain, Australia, Sweden and Germany fought to repatriate their nationals — adults, all of them. And Canada let a juvenile languish.
The reply from our government is but a single, vapid refrain: "Let the process work." But this is a process that, even apart from its other flaws, aims at punishing Omar Khadr for the accident of his birth in an al-Qaeda family.
A VICTIM OF HIS OWN HOME
When a young person raised in a terrorist family becomes a terrorist at 15, does he join voluntarily? Can he give free and informed consent? To say yes is to let al-Qaeda and Toronto's Khadr family off the hook for grooming children for terrorism. It puts the onus on the children to resist.
Most Canadian children grow up in circles within circles of benign, positive influences — family, school, neighbourhood, the larger culture. Omar's circles of influence were pro-terror. His late father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was a senior financier with al-Qaeda who prodded Abdurahman, Omar's elder brother, to become a suicide bomber. Even his mother and sister boasted on national television of the glories of terrorism.
From age 11, Omar was inculcated in terror, according to the U.S. charge sheets. "From 1996 to 2001, the Khadr family travelled throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, including yearly trips to Usama bin Laden's compound in Jalalabad for the Eid celebration at the end of Ramadan. While travelling with his father, Omar Khadr saw or personally met senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Usama bin Laden, Doctor Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Muhammad Atef (aka Abu Hafs al Masri), and Saif al Adel. Khadr also visited various al Qaeda training camps and guest houses."
Only an extraordinary 15-year-old could have withstood that grooming process. The Khadr son who did resist, Abdurahman, did not do so until he was in his 20s. A younger brother, Abdul Karim, was paralyzed in battle in Pakistan in 2004 at 14. (His father was killed in the same battle.) The oldest brother, Abdullah, faces extradition from Toronto to the United States on terrorism charges from Afghanistan.
Yet many Canadians insist he acted of his free will. "Real child soldiers are forcibly taken from their parents (who are often killed)," one Globe reader wrote in an unpublished letter to the editor. "These children are drugged, brainwashed, and abused so they become killers. Khadr became a soldier/terrorist because his family encouraged it. He was a willing participant. Where was the coercion?"
This is a narrow view of coercion. Could there be a worse form of coercion than that in a father's wish that his son become a suicide bomber? "Blow yourself up or lose your father's esteem." Omar's family culture promoted dying for the cause. That was what it meant to be a good boy in that family.
CHILD SOLDIERS ELSEWHERE
The world is rife with child soldiers. Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., estimates that as many as 300,000 child soldiers are in combat around the world. Yet none of today's international war-crimes tribunals prosecute child soldiers or terrorists.
No one under 18 has been charged before the tribunals for Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. No one has been charged in East Timor, in Cambodia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "To date, there is no precedent in history for the prosecution of a child soldier before an international criminal tribunal, and similarly there is no precedent in the Western world for prosecution of a child soldier before any state tribunal," says Sarah Paoletti, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, in a friend-of-the-court brief to the military commission that is to try Mr. Khadr. (Among those whose names are on that brief are former Canadian justice ministers Irwin Cotler and Allan Rock.) The U.S. says there are in fact precedents, but its examples predate the Nuremberg Tribunals. For instance, a British Military Court in northwestern Germany convicted and jailed a 15-year-old Hitler Youth member for his role in killing a British serviceman.
More recently, at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2004, the U.S. prosecutor, David Crane, was given the option of putting on trial, in a court without punishment, those age 15 to 17 who committed war crimes. Memorably, Mr. Crane rejected that idea. "The children of Sierra Leone have suffered enough both as victims and perpetrators. I want to prosecute the people who forced thousands of children to commit unspeakable crimes."
If international practice is clear, the law as written is less so.
The relevant text is the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. Both Canada and the U.S. are among the 150 signatories. "The Protocol prohibits the United States from using child soldiers, not from prosecuting them," says the U.S. brief to the military commission.
It's right. The protocol is silent on its face. Emboldened by that silence, the U.S. stretches the point: "If anything, the Protocol obligates the United States to prosecute Khadr" because not punishing Mr. Khadr would "further incentivize" al-Qaeda in recruiting young people.
If the U.S. is right, where is the outcry that all the world's child soldiers are going unpunished at all the world's tribunals except this one?
Omar Khadr was a war crime waiting to happen. Anyone in al-Qaeda or the Taliban is an unlawful enemy combatant under U.S. law. Anything such a combatant does to fight, even in battle, is a war crime.
"In a normal war," explained John Bellinger, a legal adviser to the U.S. state department, "where both sides have a right to engage in combat with one another, if a soldier kills a soldier on the other side, it's not murder unless it is done somehow contrary to the laws of war perfidiously, or killing someone when they have already surrendered.
"In this case, though, the members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, while they may have thought they were defending themselves, they had no legal right under the laws of war to be engaging in combat." There's a legitimate expectation that young people know and abide by the criminal law of their countries; the minimum age of criminal responsibility is usually 12 (as it is in Canada). But how could a 15-year-old of Mr. Khadr's experience and background have been aware of the laws of war, especially laws that hadn't been invented yet?
And speaking of inventions: "According to the reports of the action we have available, the last surviving enemy in that compound … as his last act at the firefight rose up with a pistol and hand grenade, and engaged the coalition forces, threw the grenade," Col. Roger King, a U.S. spokesman based in Afghanistan, told the Associated Press in September, 2002. We now know that the U.S. had an eyewitness report that painted a very different picture.
A CASE FOR CANADIAN PROCESSES
And what has Canada done to help Mr. Khadr? It sent intelligence officers to interrogate him without counsel, and passed summaries of the interrogations to the Americans. Some help. (The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing Mr. Khadr's request next week for access to Canada's files from those visits.)
"The recruitment and use of child soldiers is one of the most flagrant violations of international norms," says Mr. Singer. Why? Because children are not to be made a mere instrument of the state or terror group. Because children are manipulable. Because children cannot assess risk as adults can. To prosecute children as if they were fully responsible for war crimes is to legitimize their recruitment.
As other Western countries have repatriated adult suspected terrorists — several, in Britain's case — it seems strange that Canada would not bring a lone 21-year-old home to face fair processes that would take into account his age and background, and his long incarceration at Guantanamo. Omar Khadr, child soldier, has been dehumanized enough. Bring him home.
Even this article ignores the fact that Khadr was probably subjected to torture that would make much of the evidence against him inadmissible in any ordinary court. Of course Guanatanamo is a blot on the legal landscape but even so his U.S. military lawyer has shown a great deal of courage given his situation. We now know that there was another person alive at the scene who could have thrown the grenade but he was summarily executed -a war crime? We know that one of Khadr's interrogators was court martialed for mistreating suspects and sentenced to several months in jail. We know that he was subject to waterboarding. We know that the record of events was altered.
But Harper is not about to challeng the U.S. justice system. A Canadian sentenced to death in the U.S. got no sympathy from Harper. Of course a Canadian accused in Mexico is different, or in Saudi Arabia, or in China. But the U.S. system even in Guantanamo or when applying the death penalty is a model for Harper.
Omar Khadr: A most peculiar young offender
He should be dealt with here in Canada, as a juvenile who was involved in terrorism
SEAN FINE
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
March 22, 2008 at 12:00 AM EDT
The civilized world condemns the recruitment of child soldiers. Yet Canada sits quietly by as one of its citizens, Omar Khadr, is prosecuted by the United States for war crimes he allegedly committed at age 15 as a member of al-Qaeda.
It is impossible to square. Al-Qaeda's recruitment of child soldiers is immoral and abusive; consequently, it is immoral and abusive to prosecute as a war criminal a child recruited by al-Qaeda, and punish him accordingly. We can't have it both ways.
Lately, it has dawned on Canadians that the United States may well have lied about its evidence against Mr. Khadr. Far from having proof that only he could have thrown the grenade that killed their soldier, the U.S. appears to have hidden the truth: that the teenage Canadian was in the company of an adult al-Qaeda fighter and was himself unarmed, on his knees and facing away from battle when a U.S. soldier shot him twice — in the back.
But the falsehoods are only part of the reasons why Canadians let the 15-year-old disappear six years ago into the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in which he had no access to a lawyer for the first 27 months and no way to contest his detention. Canadians accepted that Mr. Khadr be held fully responsible for his actions. As if he were an adult.
The irony has never really penetrated Canadians' consciousness. Canada, the country of the liberal Youth Criminal Justice Act, is the only Western nation to give the United States carte blanche with one of its nationals at Guantanamo. Britain, Australia, Sweden and Germany fought to repatriate their nationals — adults, all of them. And Canada let a juvenile languish.
The reply from our government is but a single, vapid refrain: "Let the process work." But this is a process that, even apart from its other flaws, aims at punishing Omar Khadr for the accident of his birth in an al-Qaeda family.
A VICTIM OF HIS OWN HOME
When a young person raised in a terrorist family becomes a terrorist at 15, does he join voluntarily? Can he give free and informed consent? To say yes is to let al-Qaeda and Toronto's Khadr family off the hook for grooming children for terrorism. It puts the onus on the children to resist.
Most Canadian children grow up in circles within circles of benign, positive influences — family, school, neighbourhood, the larger culture. Omar's circles of influence were pro-terror. His late father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was a senior financier with al-Qaeda who prodded Abdurahman, Omar's elder brother, to become a suicide bomber. Even his mother and sister boasted on national television of the glories of terrorism.
From age 11, Omar was inculcated in terror, according to the U.S. charge sheets. "From 1996 to 2001, the Khadr family travelled throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan, including yearly trips to Usama bin Laden's compound in Jalalabad for the Eid celebration at the end of Ramadan. While travelling with his father, Omar Khadr saw or personally met senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Usama bin Laden, Doctor Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Muhammad Atef (aka Abu Hafs al Masri), and Saif al Adel. Khadr also visited various al Qaeda training camps and guest houses."
Only an extraordinary 15-year-old could have withstood that grooming process. The Khadr son who did resist, Abdurahman, did not do so until he was in his 20s. A younger brother, Abdul Karim, was paralyzed in battle in Pakistan in 2004 at 14. (His father was killed in the same battle.) The oldest brother, Abdullah, faces extradition from Toronto to the United States on terrorism charges from Afghanistan.
Yet many Canadians insist he acted of his free will. "Real child soldiers are forcibly taken from their parents (who are often killed)," one Globe reader wrote in an unpublished letter to the editor. "These children are drugged, brainwashed, and abused so they become killers. Khadr became a soldier/terrorist because his family encouraged it. He was a willing participant. Where was the coercion?"
This is a narrow view of coercion. Could there be a worse form of coercion than that in a father's wish that his son become a suicide bomber? "Blow yourself up or lose your father's esteem." Omar's family culture promoted dying for the cause. That was what it meant to be a good boy in that family.
CHILD SOLDIERS ELSEWHERE
The world is rife with child soldiers. Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., estimates that as many as 300,000 child soldiers are in combat around the world. Yet none of today's international war-crimes tribunals prosecute child soldiers or terrorists.
No one under 18 has been charged before the tribunals for Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. No one has been charged in East Timor, in Cambodia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "To date, there is no precedent in history for the prosecution of a child soldier before an international criminal tribunal, and similarly there is no precedent in the Western world for prosecution of a child soldier before any state tribunal," says Sarah Paoletti, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, in a friend-of-the-court brief to the military commission that is to try Mr. Khadr. (Among those whose names are on that brief are former Canadian justice ministers Irwin Cotler and Allan Rock.) The U.S. says there are in fact precedents, but its examples predate the Nuremberg Tribunals. For instance, a British Military Court in northwestern Germany convicted and jailed a 15-year-old Hitler Youth member for his role in killing a British serviceman.
More recently, at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2004, the U.S. prosecutor, David Crane, was given the option of putting on trial, in a court without punishment, those age 15 to 17 who committed war crimes. Memorably, Mr. Crane rejected that idea. "The children of Sierra Leone have suffered enough both as victims and perpetrators. I want to prosecute the people who forced thousands of children to commit unspeakable crimes."
If international practice is clear, the law as written is less so.
The relevant text is the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. Both Canada and the U.S. are among the 150 signatories. "The Protocol prohibits the United States from using child soldiers, not from prosecuting them," says the U.S. brief to the military commission.
It's right. The protocol is silent on its face. Emboldened by that silence, the U.S. stretches the point: "If anything, the Protocol obligates the United States to prosecute Khadr" because not punishing Mr. Khadr would "further incentivize" al-Qaeda in recruiting young people.
If the U.S. is right, where is the outcry that all the world's child soldiers are going unpunished at all the world's tribunals except this one?
Omar Khadr was a war crime waiting to happen. Anyone in al-Qaeda or the Taliban is an unlawful enemy combatant under U.S. law. Anything such a combatant does to fight, even in battle, is a war crime.
"In a normal war," explained John Bellinger, a legal adviser to the U.S. state department, "where both sides have a right to engage in combat with one another, if a soldier kills a soldier on the other side, it's not murder unless it is done somehow contrary to the laws of war perfidiously, or killing someone when they have already surrendered.
"In this case, though, the members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, while they may have thought they were defending themselves, they had no legal right under the laws of war to be engaging in combat." There's a legitimate expectation that young people know and abide by the criminal law of their countries; the minimum age of criminal responsibility is usually 12 (as it is in Canada). But how could a 15-year-old of Mr. Khadr's experience and background have been aware of the laws of war, especially laws that hadn't been invented yet?
And speaking of inventions: "According to the reports of the action we have available, the last surviving enemy in that compound … as his last act at the firefight rose up with a pistol and hand grenade, and engaged the coalition forces, threw the grenade," Col. Roger King, a U.S. spokesman based in Afghanistan, told the Associated Press in September, 2002. We now know that the U.S. had an eyewitness report that painted a very different picture.
A CASE FOR CANADIAN PROCESSES
And what has Canada done to help Mr. Khadr? It sent intelligence officers to interrogate him without counsel, and passed summaries of the interrogations to the Americans. Some help. (The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing Mr. Khadr's request next week for access to Canada's files from those visits.)
"The recruitment and use of child soldiers is one of the most flagrant violations of international norms," says Mr. Singer. Why? Because children are not to be made a mere instrument of the state or terror group. Because children are manipulable. Because children cannot assess risk as adults can. To prosecute children as if they were fully responsible for war crimes is to legitimize their recruitment.
As other Western countries have repatriated adult suspected terrorists — several, in Britain's case — it seems strange that Canada would not bring a lone 21-year-old home to face fair processes that would take into account his age and background, and his long incarceration at Guantanamo. Omar Khadr, child soldier, has been dehumanized enough. Bring him home.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Khadr's U.S. lawyer urges Ottawa to act.
Harper is not about to question the U.S. kangaroo court even though the court's lack of credibility is more than obvious, so obvious that the head of the tribunals had to resign for saying that the idea was to obtain convictions.
Harper knows that the Khadr family is well known to Canadians for their connection to Al Qaeda so they are not likely to care about violation of Khadr's rights. Harper is very supportive of human rights when it is politically astute to do so but otherwise it seems he is quite prepared to cater to his friend Bush and his cronies.
Khadr's U.S. lawyer urges Ottawa to act
Navy officer joins opposition parties to ask federal government to seek release of `child soldier'
Feb 26, 2008 04:30 AM tonda maccharles ottawa bureau
OTTAWA–The United States returned up to a dozen children and teenagers held as "combatants" in Guantanamo Bay to their respective countries, and might well act if it received a request from Canada to return Omar Khadr, says his military lawyer.
U.S. Navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, flanked by members of the three federal opposition parties, yesterday urged the Conservative government to insist on Khadr's return, suggesting the time is ripe for the U.S. to accede to such a request.
"Omar is, in our view and I think in the view of most of the international community who have looked at this case, a child soldier," said Kuebler. "His prosecution for war crimes is unprecedented in the history of war crimes tribunals."
Khadr was 15 when arrested.
The opposition parties united for the first time in calling on the Canadian government to act, and said they would seek an emergency debate in Parliament on Khadr's fate, as well as a study by a human rights subcommittee of the Commons' Foreign Affairs committee.
But the federal government appeared unmoved by the arguments, calling demands to have Khadr returned "premature" as "legal" processes are still underway.
Kuebler said that while details are scarce, the U.S. has jailed up to a dozen young people, some as young as age 10, at Guantanamo Bay. He said they are held at a separate facility known as Camp Iguana, with appropriate educational and developmental services provided as international conventions dictate for "child soldiers."
Among them, Kuebler said, was a 14-year-old Afghan boy arrested in the death of the first American soldier killed in this Afghan conflict, who was also eventually released.
None of the other so-called "child soldiers" ended up facing charges, much less war crimes charges, said Kuebler. All were returned at the request of their governments.
Khadr was singled out and treated differently, he suggested, because his father was Ahmed Said Khadr, a senior Al Qaeda fundraiser. The younger Khadr, "recruited" at age 10, was believed to have "intelligence value," and so was subjected to "rigorous interrogation."
Khadr was captured in July 2002 in Afghanistan, after a battle with U.S. Special Forces. He faces charges of murder "in violation of the laws of war" in the death of medic Sgt. Christopher Speer, attempted murder, conspiracy, spying and providing material support to terrorism.
"If a just outcome is to be secured in Omar Khadr's case, it's going to be because the Canadian government follows the lead of the British government and the Australian government and every other Western country that has demanded the repatriation of its citizen from Guantanamo Bay to face due process in a legitimate system," said Kuebler.
But Neil Hrab, a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, said nothing has changed from the government's view.
"Omar Khadr faces serious charges. The Government of Canada has sought and received assurances that Mr. Khadr is being treated humanely," Hrab said in an email. "Departmental officials have carried out several welfare visits with Mr. Khadr and will continue to do so. Any questions regarding whether Canada plans to ask for the release of Omar Khadr from Guantanamo are premature and speculative as the legal process and appeals are still underway."
Kuebler said the U.S. case against Khadr is "pure fiction," and cited recent revelations that there was, in fact, another surviving combatant after the gunfight, in addition to Khadr, raising the possibility he was not the one who threw the grenade that killed the U.S. soldier.
New Democrat MP and justice critic Joe Comartin, Liberal Dominic Leblanc and the Bloc's Vivienne Barbot said Khadr is a "child soldier" who should be returned to Canada to face "due process."
Meanwhile, the Canadian Bar Association yesterday joined counterparts in France and England in calling on U.S. President George W. Bush to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison, calling it "a grievous affront to the rule of law."'
With files from Tracey Tyler
Harper knows that the Khadr family is well known to Canadians for their connection to Al Qaeda so they are not likely to care about violation of Khadr's rights. Harper is very supportive of human rights when it is politically astute to do so but otherwise it seems he is quite prepared to cater to his friend Bush and his cronies.
Khadr's U.S. lawyer urges Ottawa to act
Navy officer joins opposition parties to ask federal government to seek release of `child soldier'
Feb 26, 2008 04:30 AM tonda maccharles ottawa bureau
OTTAWA–The United States returned up to a dozen children and teenagers held as "combatants" in Guantanamo Bay to their respective countries, and might well act if it received a request from Canada to return Omar Khadr, says his military lawyer.
U.S. Navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, flanked by members of the three federal opposition parties, yesterday urged the Conservative government to insist on Khadr's return, suggesting the time is ripe for the U.S. to accede to such a request.
"Omar is, in our view and I think in the view of most of the international community who have looked at this case, a child soldier," said Kuebler. "His prosecution for war crimes is unprecedented in the history of war crimes tribunals."
Khadr was 15 when arrested.
The opposition parties united for the first time in calling on the Canadian government to act, and said they would seek an emergency debate in Parliament on Khadr's fate, as well as a study by a human rights subcommittee of the Commons' Foreign Affairs committee.
But the federal government appeared unmoved by the arguments, calling demands to have Khadr returned "premature" as "legal" processes are still underway.
Kuebler said that while details are scarce, the U.S. has jailed up to a dozen young people, some as young as age 10, at Guantanamo Bay. He said they are held at a separate facility known as Camp Iguana, with appropriate educational and developmental services provided as international conventions dictate for "child soldiers."
Among them, Kuebler said, was a 14-year-old Afghan boy arrested in the death of the first American soldier killed in this Afghan conflict, who was also eventually released.
None of the other so-called "child soldiers" ended up facing charges, much less war crimes charges, said Kuebler. All were returned at the request of their governments.
Khadr was singled out and treated differently, he suggested, because his father was Ahmed Said Khadr, a senior Al Qaeda fundraiser. The younger Khadr, "recruited" at age 10, was believed to have "intelligence value," and so was subjected to "rigorous interrogation."
Khadr was captured in July 2002 in Afghanistan, after a battle with U.S. Special Forces. He faces charges of murder "in violation of the laws of war" in the death of medic Sgt. Christopher Speer, attempted murder, conspiracy, spying and providing material support to terrorism.
"If a just outcome is to be secured in Omar Khadr's case, it's going to be because the Canadian government follows the lead of the British government and the Australian government and every other Western country that has demanded the repatriation of its citizen from Guantanamo Bay to face due process in a legitimate system," said Kuebler.
But Neil Hrab, a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, said nothing has changed from the government's view.
"Omar Khadr faces serious charges. The Government of Canada has sought and received assurances that Mr. Khadr is being treated humanely," Hrab said in an email. "Departmental officials have carried out several welfare visits with Mr. Khadr and will continue to do so. Any questions regarding whether Canada plans to ask for the release of Omar Khadr from Guantanamo are premature and speculative as the legal process and appeals are still underway."
Kuebler said the U.S. case against Khadr is "pure fiction," and cited recent revelations that there was, in fact, another surviving combatant after the gunfight, in addition to Khadr, raising the possibility he was not the one who threw the grenade that killed the U.S. soldier.
New Democrat MP and justice critic Joe Comartin, Liberal Dominic Leblanc and the Bloc's Vivienne Barbot said Khadr is a "child soldier" who should be returned to Canada to face "due process."
Meanwhile, the Canadian Bar Association yesterday joined counterparts in France and England in calling on U.S. President George W. Bush to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison, calling it "a grievous affront to the rule of law."'
With files from Tracey Tyler
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