The Travesty of Omar Khadr

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Carolyn Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, reporting from Guantanamo on the trial of Oamar Kadr the “child soldier” captured in Afghanistan Tweets

If you haven’t heard of Omar Kadr, he is a Canadian citizen and the youngest prisoner held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp by the United States, has been frequently referred to as a child soldier and the only Western citizen remaining in Guantanamo. The Canadian Government has refused to seek extradition or repatriation despite the urgings of Amnesty International, UNICEF, the Canadian Bar Association and other prominent organizations. In 2009, it was revealed that the Canadian government had spent over $1.3 million to ensure Khadr remained in Guantanamo. Canada failed Kadr by refusing to admit that he was a juvenile and his repeated claims that he was abused. n April 2009, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms made it obligatory for the government to immediately demand Khadr’s return. After a hearing before the Court of Appeals produced the same result, the government announced they would argue their case before the Supreme Court of Canada. In January 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that Khadr’s constitutional rights had clearly been violated, but it stopped short of ordering the government to seek his return to Canada.

Khadr was the only person charged under the 2006 Military Commissions Act who did not boycott the Guantanamo proceedings. Canadian authorities also determined that Khadr had little knowledge of his father’s alleged activities, since “he was out playing or simply not interested”.

Jeralyn E. Merritt at TalkLeft has been following Omar’s tragic incarceration most extensively since 2006.

Up Date: Adam Serwer at The American Prospect commented on the The Weirdness Of The Charges Against Omar Khadr:

side from the obvious moral issues with trying someone for an alleged crime committed on a battlefield when they weren’t old enough to drive, vote, drink alcohol, or consent to sex in the United States, there’s the additional weirdness of trying the killing as a “war crime.” Human-rights groups say  no one has ever before been tried for a war crime merely for the act of killing the other side’s soldiers in combat, but the government maintains that Khadr is an “unprivileged enemy belligerent,” so the charge is appropriate.

It’s a really weird argument. By trying Khadr in a military commission, they’re essentially making him a soldier, but they’re saying the reason his alleged killing of Speer was a war crime is because he’s not a soldier. If Khadr killed Speer, that’s certainly a crime. But a war crime?

(emphasis mine)

Glen Greenwald: The Omar Khadr travesty

The only real reason I thought Robert Gibbs’ comments yesterday merited a response is not because of the ephemeral melodrama it created — the White House said Fox-copying, mean things about the Left — but because of the “substantive” claim he made that comparisons of Bush and Obama were so blatantly insane that they merited “drug testing.”  That Obama has vigorously embraced and at times even exceeded some of Bush’s most controversial and radical policies is simply indisputable.  I’d request that anyone doubting that just review the very partial list I compiled in Update II yesterday.  In that list, I neglected to mention numerous other compelling examples (recall Tim Dickinson’s recent revelation  that Interior employees call their Department under Ken Salazar’s corporate-serving rule “the third Bush term”).  Among my most prominent omissions was the Obama administration’s Bush-copying use of military commissions rather than real courts to try “War on Terror” detainees.

Snip

UPDATE II:  Maher Arar — the Canadian citizen who was abducted by the Bush administration, sent to Syria for 9 months to be tortured, and then denied any justice in American courts even once it was clear that he was completely innocent — has a superb piece at Huffington Post, entitled:  “Why Is Canadian Child Soldier Omar Khadr Being Tried by a Military Court?”  The whole thing should be read, but this is how it ends:

   The final question is: Why is Omar Khadr being tried by a military court if the government is certain he was the one who threw the grenade? Don’t they have trust in civilian courts? I think we all know the answer: these military courts are made to convict. After all, the government, as is usually the case, is throwing multiple charges at him in the hope that one of them sticks.

   This farce trial is already showing us its ugly face: his military judge has just ruled that Khadr’s confession can be used in trial.

If anyone can recognize the horror and tyranny of America’s “War on Terror” abuses, it’s Arar.  And he clearly recognizes it here.