From Robert Fife’s article for Canada’s Globe & Mail (the bold print is mine):
The Trudeau government is poised to offer an apology and a $10-million compensation package to former child soldier Omar Khadr for abuses he suffered while detained in the U.S. military prison for captured and suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2010 that the actions of federal officials who participated in U.S. interrogations of Mr. Khadr had offended “the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”
The court said the action of the Canadian government had violated the former child soldier’s rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and deprived him of fundamental principles of justice.
Mr. Khadr’s lawyer, Dennis Edney, has been seeking a formal apology from the United States and from the Trudeau government for the alleged abuse and neglect of Mr. Khadr while he was in the prison. Attempts to reach Mr. Edney for comment on Monday were unsuccessful.
Mr. Khadr was captured in Afghanistan at the age of 15 in 2002, following a shootout with U.S. troops where he was badly wounded – blinded by shrapnel in one eye and with fist-sized exit wounds in his shoulder and chest.
He was accused of throwing a grenade that killed U.S. army medic Christopher Speer in the firefight and was sent to the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.
Mr. Khadr, now 30, spent more than 10 years in U.S. and Canadian custody, much of that time in the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. Once the youngest detainee in Guantanamo, he was transferred to Canada in 2012 after accepting a plea deal.
Mr. Edney has said his client was treated abysmally even though he was a child soldier and his body shattered from wounds. U.S. interrogators subjected him to sleep deprivation and solitary confinement.
Mr. Edney said Mr. Khadr was coerced into fighting by his father, Ahmed Said Khadr – a top al-Qaeda operative until he was killed in a gunfight with Pakistani troops in 2003.
Last March, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale issued an apology and compensation package to three Muslim Canadian men – Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmatti and Muayyed Nureddin. They had been tortured and held for months in Syria and Egypt, suspected of links to terrorism.
A decade ago, they each filed $100-million lawsuits against Ottawa but halted their legal proceedings to allow former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci to conduct an internal inquiry. Mr. Iacobucci ruled in 2008 that Canadian officials were indirectly responsible for their torture.
Let me get this straight: the Canadian government is paying $10 million to an enemy combatant who killed a United States medic, because he was detained in Guantanamo (as opposed to being shot at sunrise)? And APOLOGIZING to him?
The reason? He didn’t really mean it, his al-qaeda father made him do it?
Maybe bowe bergdahl should tell a court his father made him desert his post too. See how that works out on this side of the border.
I am a proud citizen of the United States. And, until recently, I have always thought of Canada as being one of the only acceptable alternatives to my home country.
But now? With its astoundingly censorial laws on freedom of speech (which you may or may not know about, because our wonderful mainstream media have virtually buried Canada’s shame in this regard, and now apologizing/paying off a murderous jihadist? And its willingness to apologize/compensate other jihadists as well?
Not any more. Our northern border is no longer “O, Canada”. It is “Canada: O, Brother”.
They can keep it.
P.S. I’ll write about Canada’s shameful abridgements of free speech in a separate blog – probably in the next day or two. People should know.
