2017-07-11

On the Omar Khadr Debacle

Okay, let me get this straight:
• A nine-year-old juvenile Canadian-born citizen, far below any age of legal consent and below the age of criminal responsibility, gets taken away from Canadian schooling and Canadian socialization by his own father and placed within a criminal terrorist organization in a foreign country, a conflict zone where all this juvenile Canadian-born citizen can know and experience is the indoctrination and socialization within that criminal terrorist organization, compelling him to become a child soldier, while Canadian authorities give no attention whatsoever to this blatant child abuse, child endangerment, and gross contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile;
• in time, following a combat firefight between American soldiers and a unit of this criminal terrorist organization in which an American soldier, in training to become a military medic but, at the time, serving in a combat role, was fatally wounded by a grenade thrown, according to field reports written immediately following the incident, by a middle-aged terrorist who was immediately shot and killed during the conflict, this still juvenile Canadian-born citizen, not yet sixteen years of age, was found, severely injured but alive and buried under rubble as the sole survivor from the terrorist unit, and treated for his injuries then taken prisoner;
• As a prisoner, this still juvenile Canadian-born citizen got placed among adult detainees in a notorious prison within the country of conflict, then transferred with adult detainees to another notorious prison at an American military base in another country, without formal designation either as a prisoner of war or as a convicted juvenile criminal, where he was held through his remaining teenage years and well into his adulthood all the while without appropriate contact with Canadian authorities;
• While this Canadian-born citizen remained in these prisons, other prisoners who were citizens of other nations got called home by their own governments and returned in accordance with the laws and treaty obligations their own home governments, yet the government of Canada refused to call for the return of this Canadian-born citizen;
• Also, while held in these prisons and in contravention of international law and the treaty prohibiting torture, this Canadian-born citizen was subjected to substantial torture over many years, yet Canada's government under three different Prime Ministers extended no objection to this ongoing torture as would be appropriate in order to meet the obligations to which Canada committed as a signatory to the International treaty prohibiting the torture;
• Over a great many years, and through the administrations of three different Prime Ministers, this Canadian-born citizen’s incarceration without appropriate designation, persisted with neither contact nor support from Canadian authorities as required under Canadian law and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, instead Canadian authorities neglected and may have abetted his intolerable incarceration and torture;
• Eventually and after extraction under torture of a confession of murder, this ill-educated and highly indoctrinated from youth Canadian-born citizen, as the sole survivor of the terrorist unit involved in the combat firefight, received the offer of a trial by military tribunal on a charge of murder of the American soldier killed by the grenade – the offer extended with the condition that he plead guilty as charged or the offer of a trial would be withdrawn and he would remain unclassified in incarceration without charge indefinitely;
• Upon conviction for this trumped-up murder charge the way was finally cleared for this Canadian-born citizen to return to Canada where he served some time within the Canadian prison system;
• In due course, during the term of the government of our immediately previous Prime Minister, Canadian law courts became aware of the situation and brought down a ruling that the rights of this Canadian-born citizen had been flagrantly violated and that the government of the day and the governments under the two immediately previous Prime Ministers had broken Canadian law, paving the way for a suit for damages against the Government of Canada;
And many other Canadians are outraged that the current Government of Canada negotiated an apology to this Canadian-born citizen and an out-of-court settlement at roughly half the anticipated penalty that our courts may have imposed while also saving on the substantial legal costs of attempting to defend this case.