Conservatives Stand Firm:
Refuse to Protect Canadian Prisoner's Constitutional/Human Rights
by C. L. Cook
 Janice Tibbetts, writing for Canwest News Service, notes Canada's foreign affairs ministry's determination to refuse to seek the repatriation of Canadian Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Omar Khadr. The Khadr case has festered in the Canadian judicial system for years, receiving repeated favourable rulings concerning the probity of seeking Mr. Khadr's release, even as he has languished within the infamous and hellish prison created by George W. Bush, and now maintained by his successor.
Omar Khadr pictured shortly before his capture in 2002. Headed for trial after being tortured, imprisoned, and held without trial for seven and half years.
Speaking for the prime minister, Dimitri Soudas told the press;
"There's no shift in Canadian policy on this [...] Their [Supreme Court of Canada] ruling said we get to decide and we're saying that Mr. Khadr faces serious charges on a wide range of things. . . It's under the American administration's purview right now to pursue with the court case."
Besides the inaccuracy of Mr. Soudas' statement to the press, there is something profoundly troubling about a government that would not only choose to abandon the principles protecting its citizenry, but do so in a case so repugnant and clearly unjust.
Omar Khadr is not charged on "a wide range of things" as Soudas says, but faces a number of charges stemming from a single incident the court is calling murder, and a specious charge of "attempted murder of U.S. personnel by planting improvised explosive devices in the ground where U.S. troops were expected to travel;" that based on a video tape purported to be, but not definitively Khadr.
Because the person killed in this case, American special forces Sgt. Christopher Speer, died in action, the American military tribunal set to "try" Khadr in July, has concluded the murder charge is a "war crime." Added to the ridiculous charge: conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding the enemy. All of these charges were dismissed in 2007 by a U.S. military judge for "lack of jurisdiction," with "terrorism" charges being reinstated upon appeal to the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review later of the same year.
Throughout the legal process, and it's a term of extreme elasticity in this case, Khadr has been subject to changing designations, reclassification, evolving charges, and a parade of lawyers from within and without U.S. military and civilian judicial systems. His lawyers have been hamstrung by terror laws that forbid they see evidence, or cross-examine witnesses, with the law itself being redefined to suit a successful prosecution.
A case in point: at his pretrial hearing, the judge threw out the charges against him because Khadr's status as an "enemy combatant" did not qualify him for trial by military commission. The judge pointed out the tribunals were designed only for "unlawful enemy combatants."
On appeal, the ruling was tossed out, the appellant judge refusing the objection as a matter of "semantics." Just "words" in other words. That laws are made of words, upon whose interpretation fate depends, the casual dismissal of the letters of the law in the manner they were in this case is shocking.
Even more disturbing is another ruling, defining what American justice has come to mean in the 21 st Century. Because Khadr was tortured, his lawyers had sought to have any testimony he made to his tormentors stricken from the case. The prohibition of coerced testimony is a cornerstone of modern justice the world over, but since 2006, America has defined for itself new rights and privileges that do not recognize confessions given under torture to be inadmissible.
Trial Watch informs:
"Unde  r the new 2006 Military Commissions Act, coerced testimony is allowed and no one subject to such trials "may invoke Geneva Conventions as a source of rights."
Burning the Geneva Conventions must be seen as a small thing, in the context of the American court's erasure of habeas corpus, that semantic collection of verbiage guaranteeing the individual's right to the safety of her person against the tyrannical misapplication of power by the state.
That bit was added to the Great Charter, or Magna Carta during the reign of the despotic King John, circa 13th Century (you remember, the pointy bearded villain Robin of Loxley had so much merriment bedeviling).
Khadr's Canadian lawyer, Nathan Whitling told reporters he expected the Canadian position announced today, saying;
"We are disappointed but not at all surprised by the Harper government's refusal to accept responsibility for its violation of the basic human rights of a Canadian child."
Yes, this abortion of American justice, and the abrogation of the Canadian government to fulfill its duty to protect a Canadian citizen by interceding in this travesty is: defendant Omar Khadr is 15, while prisoner Khadr is 23 years old.
As Whitling reminds: Omar Khadr was a kid when all this conspiracy and alleged war criminality took place. The fifteen year old, shot to pieces and nearly left for dead following a coordinated special forces surprise attack on a small mountain village in Afghanistan, should never have been put through all this.
By rights, internationally agreed rights, Khadr should have been recognized as, at the very least, a child soldier. He should have received repatriation and rehabilitation, not torture, indefinite incarceration, and now a kangaroo show trial.
But, Omar Khadr is the son of a man close to the new age's Scarlet Pimpernel, Osama bin Laden, a prize the Americans thought they could use as leverage. That Omar's father is long dead doesn't matter. So, he remains a prisoner, now rumoured to be among those soon to be flown out of Guantanamo Bay to take up residence in a super max prison not far from constitutional lawyer and president Barack Obama's home turf in Illinois.
At the bottom of this case lies a truth already known: Khadr is innocent. The whole of the American case rested on the oft repeated "fact:" Omar Khadr was the only person in the compound alive when the fateful hand-grenade that killed Christopher Speer was thrown. An as-yet to be named Lieutenant involved in the raid that day testified in a prior hearing, Khadr was not the only survivor, and that it was likely the grenade was thrown by another man, subsequently killed.
This should send a chill down the spine of all Canadian citizens, who now know: Your constitutional rights are worth less than nothing when your government doesn't care about them. That's justice for you.
For more on the Omar Khadr case, please see the Pacific Free Press archives here.
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