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Time to bring Khadr come home

For those who don't know what I am writing about, let me give you some background. There is a Canadian family that is fairly well known in Canada (due to their views and relations with unsavoury characters). They have a few children. Born in Canada. Canadian citizens. One of the kids is accused of some fairly terrible acts. He is in a foreign prison. Canada has not worked on getting him home. Or help defend him for that matter. Maybe it isn't that big a deal. But maybe the details will make you wonder why I care about this.

So, the details. The family name is Khadr. The father, he was close to one Osama bin Laden. He took his family to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He fought on behalf of those nuts in Afghanistan. Perhaps he was responsible for the deaths of soldiers and maybe even civilians (Afghan or otherwise). His kids were questionably involved in some of these activities. The family has, on more than one occassion expressed views that are not quite in line with what Canadians generally express.

One such kid, Omar, who was 15 at the time, I may add, was in a compound somewhere in Afghanistan when American soldiers barged in, shot the place up, got shot at etc. While the details are unclear to us civilians, it sounds like a few people might have been there and a grenade was thrown at an American medic who died. The boy was shot in the back at some point in this raid and is paralysed for life.

Those are the facts as we know it. These are facts that have come out of the trail. Or the attempts to try Khadr for terrorism acts. After the raid, he was shipped off to an American military base on an island south of Florida. You may have heard of this Guantanamo Bay place in Cuba where somewhat questionable rules of law are applied and used. Ignoring that fact for a moment, the people held there are mostly accused criminals and perhaps higher level bona fide terrorists.

There are other such people there. Saudi Arabian. Pakistani. Arab. Afghan. The folks missing are the ones from other Western countries. Its not like they weren't there. They were. Many British men were. Australians were I believe. Danish too. These people have been extradited back to their countries of origin to be tried under their own judicial systems for terrorism charges. Most of these governments would probably like to lock such people up, but under the auspices of legality. And that is likely how it will work.

But not Canada for some reason. We have decided to leave a person who would have been considered a coerced child soldier under International law (because he was 15) in an American prison of questionable legality to be tried in a military tribunal with no guarantees of a free and fair trial. I realise this is America, not some despotic country, but even many Americans are uncomfortable with this set up. It isn't by accident that the United States Supreme Court had ventured an opinion on this. One that is not favourable to the existence of such courts.

And it is not like we don't have an extradition treaty with the United States. Or that we don't have good relations with them. We do. We, as a routine habit, will not extradite an alleged criminal to a third party without assurances that the death penalty will not be applied for example. While I think that is a fair request, we do sometimes hamstring other judicial processes by doing so. But such is the cost of doing the extradition business with us. We don't hang or electrocute or posion people to death via law. We cannot send people to such a fate willingly either.

So why is Khadr still in that jail? Perhaps it is because the Canadian government thinks that Khadr will be safe in the US. Meaning that the judicial system will kick in and ensure a somewhat fair trial. Possibly. But that's not a good reason to leave him behind. He's a Canadian citizen. He's being held under questionable circumstances and legal loopholes at a location that is controversial and perhaps illegal under various laws, Canadian, American and International and is going to be tried and possibly convicted of crimes that he may or may not have committed.

I am not arguing his guilt or his innocence. I am merely saying that he needs a fair trial at home. He is Canadian and he is being tried in a situation that is not entirely fair or going through a legal system that has the right checks and balances. No matter what he has done, he is a Canadian by birth. We as a country, and we as a government of said country have an obligation to protect every one of our citizens, crooked or not. We cannot do that in this situation. A lot of the evidence seems to be circumstantial, a lot of it is classified and a lot of it was in a place without any legal norms and conducted under a situation of war.

This boy is no Herman Göring or Kaltenbrunner. And this is hardly the Nuremberg trials. He needs to be brought home. He needs to face a justice system which gives him the same rights as any other alleged criminal. He needs proper representation to defend him in a fair court. Some people in Canada feel uncomfortable with that because his family has such orthodox views in comparison with what we as Canadians feel are right. That should not matter though. He is Canadian. And that's the end of it. As a citizen, he should be given the same rights you and I have whether he thinks Osama bin Laden is a good fellow to have a cup of tea with or the devil incarnate. That is one of the reasons why Canada (and it isn't just Canada, it is many countries with normal democratic governments with independent legal systems) is what it is.

This does not mean that all military secrets are divulged openly in court. Canada has conducted a few trials of people who have been charged with terrorism offences. Its not like we went around telling the world the trade secrets of various security agencies. There is a way to handle this and we are not terrible at it. I also think that the Canadian government, under Stephen Harper, feels like it can ignore this issue. Most Canadians may not care too much about it, but as someone who likes his freedom and expects his government to save his ass should something go wrong while he is anywhere on earth (if you look at your passport, it requests various rights for you in the name of Her Majesty), I find it appalling that we have abandoned one of our own citizens to a military legal system that even _their_ own civilian legal system finds questionable.

The correct thing to do would be to cut a deal with the Americans to ship him to Canada and make him stand trial for what he is accused of doing. And then use the appropriate evidence to either convict him, or exonnerate him. What happens after that is not consequential. If he's guilty, he goes to prison. If he's innocent, we give him the option of coming back into Canadian society. And maybe at some point, perhaps we can ask the soldiers as to why they shot a kid on the battlefield through the spine to paralyse him. Not to accuse them of anything, but to wonder really. I realise shit happens. Shit happens in war zones. But... someone needs to explain how this happened. Regardless of whether he is the most evil terrorist or just someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Feel free to leave an opinion. It helps to know what others think.

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