VOICE OF THE PEOPLE | FEB. 6, 2015
Hang ’em high
There seems to be no justice for the civilized world when ISIS kidnaps and then beheads its victims, now going so far as to burn alive a Jordanian pilot.
There needs to be some deterrence for these Islamist extremists. The best deterrence I can think of is to capture them, then immediately hang them. We are way too nice to these animals, by putting them in jails for years, wasting millions of dollars wondering what to do with them, feeding them, giving them lawyers then putting them on trial. Do they give their prisoners the benefit of trials?
It’s past time this sort of criminal was subjected to the same brand of justice that they so readily hand out.
Ron O’Reilly, Dartmouth
Opposition misguided
The burning to death of a Jordanian fighter pilot by ISIS should remind all Canadians that, at any moment, one or more of our brave pilots could be placed in a similar position.
For those Canadians who do not support the government’s actions in the battle against ISIS, I say that is your right to disagree. The leaders of the NDP and Liberals should support this action because it is the right thing to do if one them form government.
However, Justin Trudeau and Tom Mulcair would rather give care packages to ISIS than deliver them some fire from the sky. Our Arab allies will need to be trained to confront ISIS on the ground in greater numbers, and that’s what Canadians are doing.
To constantly call the prime minister a liar because troops have engaged the enemy is telling ISIS that the NDP and Liberals are pushovers.
I hope we never see a Canadian fighter pilot in a cage ready to be put on fire, but that risk is there. All Mulcair and Trudeau can do is take potshots at the prime minister when they should be going after ISIS.
Jim Hoskins, Halifax
fighting 4 ISLAM- .... 2 Islams...
and..
COMMENTARY ON CANADIAN POLITICAL ISSUES
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Khadr urinated on photo of his family
From some of the comments on the Khadr family I have noticed in some Canadian blogs this gesture by Khadr would make some people more empathetic to Khadr! This is from antiwar.com.
Khadr is obviously completely conflicted in his feelings about his family but that is not at all surprising given his experiences.
The most distressing anecdote from Gould's report, however, which, bizarrely, he portrayed as an example of Omar "hav[ing] some feelings," followed a session with an interrogator from the Department of Defense, who had shown him a photo of his family, only for Omar to deny that he knew anyone in the picture. "Left alone with the picture and despite his shackles," the report continued, "Omar urinated on the picture. The MPs cleaned him, the picture, and floor and again left him alone with the picture – after shortening his shackles so that he couldn't urinate on the picture again. But, with the flexibility of youth, he was able to lower his trousers and again urinated on the picture. Again the MPs cleaned up and left him alone with the picture on a table in front of him. After two and a half hours alone and probably assuming that he was no longer being watched, Omar laid his head down on the table beside the picture in what was seen as an affectionate manner."
This is an example of Omar "hav[ing] some feelings"? In my world, which I hope you share, it shows a horrendously isolated and abused teenager displaying mood swings that are symptomatic of extreme mental disturbance.
http://kencan7.blogspot.ca/2008/07/khadr-urinated-on-photo-of-his-family.html
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POSTED:- WE REMEMBER
F**KING UNITED NATIONS- OUR CANADA PEACEKEEPERS WERE THERE.... THEY WEPT.... AND SCREAMED - U BASTARDS.... U BASTARDS....article- Serbia, Croatia didn't commit genocide in 1990s: Top UN court
AP | Feb 3, 2015, 05.34 PM IST
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Serbia-Croatia-didnt-commit-genocide-in-1990s-Top-UN-court/articleshow/46109510.cms
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The Khadrs: ‘First
Family of Terror’
by Tarek S. Fatah • October
22, 2006 •
August 4, 2006
Canada’s ‘first family of terror’ is
caught between two worlds — hoops and holy war, infidels and the Internet,
movie scripts and martyrdom
MICHAEL FRISCOLANTI
Maclean’s Magazine, Canada
Maclean’s Magazine, Canada
Kareem Khadr is kneeling on the living room carpet, a short crawl from
his wheelchair. He is barefoot, dressed in a bright yellow soccer T-shirt —
BRAZIL — and a pair of beige shorts that expose his limp, crippled legs. His
mother and sister are sitting nearby, talking to one another as he flips, page
by page, through a pile of old photo albums. Every so often, he interrupts
their conversation to point and smile at a specific snapshot from the past. His
father. His brothers. Afghanistan.
Years ago, long before 9/11, the Khadr family lived briefly with Osama
bin Laden. Today, home is the second floor of a low-rise apartment complex in
east end Toronto. Inside the main room, a light brown couch, second-hand, sits
near the balcony window, right beside a matching chair and small flat screen
television. Most of the walls are lined with colour posters, each of a
different mosque.
Near the front door, on the opposite side of the kitchenette, a narrow
hallway leads to three tiny bedrooms and a bathroom. Depending on the day, up
to six people sleep here. “We look like sardines,” says Zaynab, Kareem’s
26-year-old sister.
At 17, Kareem is the youngest of the four Khadr boys, the obedient son
who — at age 14 — was famously caught in the crossfire when Pakistani troops killed
his terrorist dad, Ahmed Said Khadr. Paralyzed from the waist down, Kareem said
goodbye to jihad and headed home to Canada, flashing the peace sign to
photographers when he landed at Toronto’s Pearson Airport on April 9, 2004.
And that was the last anyone saw of him. His notorious family was never
far from the headlines: his sister under RCMP investigation. A brother in a
Toronto jail cell. Another brother locked up at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But for
two years, Kareem managed to avoid the spotlight — until a few weeks ago, when
he showed up at a court hearing for the so-called “Toronto 17,” Canada’s
alleged homegrown terror cell rounded up by police in June.
His black hair long and curly, Kareem sat in the front row, waving at
some of his shackled friends while brushing aside reporters. He was dressed
like a typical 17-year-old: brown sandals, blue pants and a T-shirt emblazoned
with a gun-toting Stewie, the cartoon baby from The Family Guy. “VICTORY WILL
BE MINE!” the shirt proclaimed.
Two weeks later, Kareem is kneeling on his apartment floor, finished
with the photo albums. Until now, he has never spoken publicly about that
morning in October 2003, when Pakistani soldiers and Cobra helicopters
demolished the rural compound where he and his father were living. One bullet
hit his arm; another pierced his lower back and came out the other side. When
he tried to stand up and run, his legs wouldn’t listen. “There were no muscles
anymore,” he tells Maclean’s.
At an age when most teenagers are learning to drive, Kareem cannot
venture too far from home without a catheter. He tries to walk, using leg
braces and a pair of crutches, but progress has been slow at best. Yet he
insists he holds no grudge against his beloved father, a man who could have
raised his kids in Canada but chose holy war instead. “I never blamed him,”
Kareem says. “I’m proud of him. I know I had to be in that spot because there
is a reason for it. Almost everything happens for a reason. And I’m still
pretty happy that I didn’t get paralyzed from a car accident or a gang shooting
or something. You know, at least I was there helping my father. I had a cause
to be there.”
A senior RCMP investigator once wrote, in a sworn affidavit, that Ahmed
Khadr “created his own ‘terrorist cell’ and indoctrinated his children from an
early age in the values and beliefs of criminal extremists, specifically
al-Qaeda.” Three years after his death, those children (most of them, at least)
remain the apple of his radical eye, railing against the evils of the same
Western world that signs their welfare cheques.
Despite all the public backlash and all the police investigations, the
family is as outspoken and unapologetic as ever — proclaiming their innocence
in one breath and warning of an attack on the innocent in the next. Few
Canadians were shocked to learn that some of the Toronto 17 counted the Khadrs
among their closest friends.
Still, not everything in the Khadr household revolves around jihad. When
they aren’t blaming the infidels or influencing the next batch of aspiring
extremists, the family struggles with the same day-to-day battles as most
Canadians. Car payments. Exams. Disobedient children. Sibling rivalry. Their
hypocrisy is almost humorous. Zaynab — divorced with a six-year-old daughter — muses
about martyrdom, then discusses her plans to go to university.
Her mother, Maha, complains almost as much about U.S. foreign policy as
the fact that Kareem was cut from a wheelchair basketball team. And then there
is Abdurahman, the self-proclaimed “cancer” of the clan, the black sheep
brother who turned on his father and worked as a spy for the United States. The
others can barely stand him, yet, in a typical Khadr twist, he continues to
live in the family’s crowded apartment. He smokes. He gambles. And he sleeps
until noon. Next year, his life story is scheduled to hit movie theatres.
Zaynab Khadr answers the door. It is just after 10:30 a.m., a scorching
summer morning in Toronto. She is dressed in black, in a head-to-toe burka that
reveals only her hands and her dark brown eyes. Her mother, Maha, smiles from
the kitchen. She is wearing white, with a matching hijab that, unlike her
daughter, reveals her face. The Khadr women don’t shake hands with men. But
they are courteous and welcoming, as is Kareem, waiting on the carpet in his
World Cup shirt.
Canadians first met the Khadr family more than a decade ago, when Ahmed
Khadr, an Egyptian-born Ottawa engineer, was arrested by Pakistani police in
connection with the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad.
Authorities accused him of financing the operation, funnelling the cash through
a Canadian charity. He denied the allegations, embarking on a high-profile
hunger strike that made such ripples back home that Jean Chrétien, then the
prime minister, lobbied on his behalf during a state visit to Pakistan. He was
released three months later.
Next stop for the family was Afghanistan, where all four of his Canadian
sons underwent weapons and explosives training. After Sept. 11, authorities
froze Khadr’s assets, declaring him an al-Qaeda money man and a wanted
fugitive. According to the FBI, bin Laden himself personally tasked his
Canadian associate with organizing local militia south of Kabul in anticipation
of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
Of course, his family denies all this. He was a charity worker, they
say, a man so dedicated to the orphans and widows of war that he stayed in
Afghanistan to help, bombs be damned. “If you run away, what’s the point of
being an NGO?” Zaynab asks.
Seven years ago, bin Laden was a guest at her wedding. Today, back in
Toronto, she and her six-year-old daughter live with the rest of her family.
During the week, she attends high school classes, hoping to one day go to
university. “If we are different, it does not mean we have to be enemies,” she
says. “You don’t have to fear me.”
Eighteen months ago, the Mounties searched Zaynab’s belongings, seizing
thousands of computer files, CDs and audio cassettes, some containing “graphic
images of an extreme nature.” Ironically enough, the RCMP had used Zaynab’s own
words — broadcast in a CBC documentary — to convince a judge to sign the search
warrant. On suicide bombers: “I don’t have the guts to do that yet.” On
accusations that her brother, Omar, killed a U.S. army medic before being
shipped to Gitmo: “Big deal.”
On martyrdom: “I’d love to die like that.” She remains under
investigation “for participation and facilitation of terrorist activities,” yet
she is fearless, taunting detectives, ever so subtly, from the comfort of her
home. “If carrying my father’s beliefs — and I believe that my father had great
beliefs and he did not do anything wrong — is supposed to be poison, then maybe
all of us need to have poisoned heads,” she says now, sitting cross-legged on
the floor. “I am proud of who I am. I don’t regret anything that my family or
anybody that I knew did. And I am proud that I will stand up for my belief
regardless of what anybody else thinks.”
There was a time, Zaynab says, when her family had nothing against
Canada. The Americans were the enemy, the aggressors “muddling in everybody’s
business.” It was the United States who built bases in Saudi Arabia, who
invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Who bomb Muslim children and torture Muslim
prisoners. Who unequivocally support Israel.
“If anybody ever said something about Canada, we’d all say: ‘You know
what, we’ve lived there. People are very nice and the government stays out of
things it is not included in and it does not interfere in people’s business,'”
Zaynab says. “But then all of a sudden, when they started acting the same, what
are you supposed to say? They are not the same? But they are killing us.”
Zaynab is certainly not the only Canadian who disagrees with the
country’s mission in Kandahar, where hundreds of troops are hunting and killing
Taliban insurgents. But she takes the debate to an uncomfortable level,
suggesting that Canada, like its U.S. ally, is now deserving of a terror
attack.
“Everybody reaps what they plant,” she says. “If you follow in the steps
of the Americans, you will reap what they did.” Not that she would ever do
something herself. Of course not. But someone might, she says, and Canadians
should consider themselves warned. “Violence is not justified, but it should be
expected, is what I am trying to say,” she explains. “No one likes it, but it
happens.
And should the Canadians expect it with the strategy that’s being taken?
They should expect it. Would it be justified or would it be good or would it be
nice?
No. Would I justify the person doing it? I wouldn’t justify the means,
but I could justify his reasons.”
“Get the troops of out of Afghanistan,” her mother adds. “Don’t declare
war in Afghanistan.”
“Just go back to who you were 10 years ago,” Zaynab says. “Withdraw the
troops. Stop being America’s shadow. Start being yourself.”
Kareem, now lying on his stomach, joins the conversation. Killing
civilians, he says, is not the answer. “They didn’t do nothing to us. They
didn’t harm us.”
“But they are harming people that are our families and are our friends,”
Zaynab says. “I might be able to hold more pressure than someone else, but
someone else might snap.”
When asked how she would react tomorrow if someone planted a bomb at,
say, a large public building, her answer is hardly encouraging. “I would need
to know why first,” she says. “Even if I told them it was not the right thing
to do, I would understand why they did it.”
Zaynab is not naive. She knows that most Canadians cringe at her every
word. How, after all, can someone so thoroughly enjoy the spoils of life in
this country — free money, free health care, free schools — while implying that
the very same country is a prime target for terrorism? “All I want from the
Canadians is to get me out of here,” she answers. (The RCMP seized her passport
in the raid, so she is technically stuck here.) “Hopefully, I see myself out of
here as soon as I can, because I don’t fit here. I don’t fit here, not even
with the Muslims. I walk around and I don’t feel that anybody understands me or
that I can blend with anybody or fit with anybody.”
A McDonald’s restaurant sits across the street from the Khadrs’
building, the golden arches visible from the front lobby. Seven months ago —
Saturday, Dec. 17 — an RCMP detective phoned the apartment and asked if
Abdullah, the eldest of the family’s four sons, would mind meeting him at the
fast food joint for a few minutes. By then, the 25-year-old had been in Canada
for all of two weeks, a free man after spending more than a year in a Pakistani
prison and many years before that on the run. He was thrilled to be back,
telling reporters that fellow citizens have nothing to fear. “I just want
everybody to know that I have nothing to do with anything,” he said, sitting in
his lawyer’s office, wearing a green shirt he borrowed from his cousin. “I am
not an al-Qaeda suspect. I was never in al-Qaeda, and I do not support some of
their doings.”
A week later, Abdullah crossed the road and walked into McDonald’s,
accompanied by his mother and his younger brother, Abdurahman. He had no idea
that a judge in Boston had already signed a warrant for his arrest. According
to the FBI, Abdullah admitted during his imprisonment that he was an al-Qaeda
weapons broker who supplied front-line fighters with thousands of dollars worth
of guns, grenades, rockets and explosive material. Authorities say he also
confessed to his role in a plot to assassinate Pakistan’s prime minister.
Mounties arrested him on the spot; when his mother tried to intervene, officers
pinned her to the floor.
“After they arrested Abdullah, I felt so deceived,” Maha says now. “How
do you expect me to love or respect or care or even feel anything toward a
government that is deceiving me? Why should I care?”
“It becomes very difficult for us to deal with,” Zaynab adds. “You would
say: ‘Would that give you the right to do anything?’ Eventually, I’m not going
to care anymore. Eventually, you are so hurt that you just don’t care.”
As she speaks, Abdurahman wakes up and walks into the living room,
unprepared for what he sees: his brother, sister and mother sitting on the
carpet, talking to a reporter. He says hello, but then berates the others for
being so blind. He is not your friend, he says. He is a journalist. Then he
walks outside for a cigarette, slamming the door behind him.
“It’s okay,” Zaynab says. “It’s regular.”
“We can’t get him out,” her mother adds. “I have to go to court to get
him out, and I don’t want to do that because I don’t like the courts. I don’t
like the officers.”
Abdurahman was always the outsider. In 2004, when the CBC aired its
explosive documentary about the Khadrs, he was the one who admitted that his
was “an al-Qaeda family.” To the outrage of the others, he told the world about
his father’s close relationship with bin Laden, and how his dad repeatedly
urged him to become a suicide bomber. He also confessed to working as a mole
for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency — a claim that caught the attention of
a Hollywood production company. In January 2005, he sold the film rights for a
reported US$500,000.
Unlike the rest of his family, Abdurahman is media savvy, a 23-year-old
who knows full well how to exploit the press for his own benefit. Last year,
when the federal government denied him a passport, he took Ottawa to court —
and invited reporters to come. The day the judge ruled in his favour, he held
his umpteenth news conference. “I’ll prove that [I’m] the perfect citizen,” he
said. One journalist asked where he planned to travel with his new passport.
Barbados, he answered.
Maclean’s had other questions for him. Questions about his family. About
his future. About rumours that he gambled away a huge chunk of his money. But
Abdurahman declined to be interviewed. Not yet, at least. Not until his movie —
Son of Al Qaeda — reaches the big screen.
After reading the script, you can’t blame him for keeping his mouth
shut. Written by Keir Pearson, the man behind Hotel Rwanda, the screenplay
portrays Abdurahman as nothing less than a Hollywood hero, an intelligent,
compassionate young man who rejects radical Islam and happily helps the
Americans track down the bad guys. He drives fast, drinks vodka and takes his
new colleagues on a “five-star tour” of al-Qaeda safe houses across
Afghanistan. His CIA handlers nickname him Ricky, rewarding each fresh tip with
cigarettes and other perks. “My father believed one thing,” his character says
in one scene. “I believe another.”
The film begins in the days after 9/11, with the Khadrs fleeing their
Afghan home just before American troops arrive. Defiant as ever, Abdurahman
refuses to jump in the pickup truck with the rest of his family.
“Leave him!” his father yells to the others (the script is still being
revised, but Maclean’s has obtained a draft version). As the movie unfolds,
Abdurahman is captured in Kabul, transported to a prison in Bagram, and
interrogated by a CIA agent named Michael Gray. After days of sleep
deprivation, he finally admits who he really is: the son of Ahmed Khadr,
al-Qaeda’s “Secretary of State.”
Abdurahman eventually joins forces with his father’s “sworn enemy,” working
undercover in Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and Bosnia. “We caught one of bin
Laden’s personal guards,” Gray, the CIA agent, tells him at one point. “We’re
going to put you in a cell with him. After a while, chat him up. Get him to
tell you where Osama’s hiding.”
“What makes you think he’ll tell me?” Abdurahman asks.
“You’re Ahmed Khadr’s son,” the agent answers. “It has its benefits.”
The script includes more than one flashback to Abdurahman’s younger
days, including a pivotal memory of his father pleading with him to become a
martyr. “So what’s it going to be?” his dad asks in one dramatic scene.
“Don’t ask me this,” Abdurahman answers. “I’d never betray you.”
“That’s not the question,” dad barks back.
“It’s the only way to redeem your family name,” says another al-Qaeda
elder, sitting in the room.
“I don’t care,” Abdurahman pleads. “I’m not going to strap a bomb to
myself and blow up a bunch of innocent people.”
“Shaheeds bring honour to all,” his father says. “It’s sacrificing the
one for the many.
It’s Allah’s will.”
“It’s insanity.”
“I’m your father, damn it! And I command you to do it!”
What is most compelling about the script is Abdurahman’s attempts to
have it both ways. He is the disloyal son, more than willing to tattle on his
father’s old friends to save his own skin. Yet all the while, he repeatedly —
and conveniently — insists that he never sold out his old man. In fact, when
his character first agrees to help the CIA, he demands a concession: “My family
is off limits,” he says. Later, after his father is killed and his brother is
paralyzed, the agents assure him it was not his fault. “Nothing you told us
resulted in your father’s death, Abdurahman,” Gray says. “We had multiple
tips.”
Back in the real world, Abdurahman returns to the apartment, finished
his morning cigarette. Moments later, his cellphone rings. He takes the call on
the balcony.
“He has very different views,” Zaynab says.
“Very different,” Kareem adds.
“It’s human nature,” his mother says. “He always had different beliefs
since he was very young.”
Abdurahman was at McDonald’s the night police handcuffed Abdullah and
held their mother on the floor. He watched, snapping photos with his camera
phone. “He’s a coward,” Zaynab says.
“Why couldn’t he tell them: ‘Don’t touch my mother. You can’t do this to
her,’ ” Maha says. “I mean, she’s your mother!”
The Khadrs have saved all of Omar’s handwritten letters from prison,
each one asking for their prayers and their love. Some are signed with hearts.
Earlier this month, he wrote home to tell his family that he fired his American
lawyers. “Please dear mom don’t be mad,” he wrote. “Allah is our defender and
helper.”
At age 15, Omar Khadr allegedly tossed a grenade that killed a U.S. army
medic in Afghanistan. Now 19, he has spent the past four years locked in a cell
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, charged with murder and aiding the enemy. Omar “is a
thoroughly ‘screwed up’ young man,” wrote one Foreign Affairs official, who
visited him at the seaside prison in 2003. “All those persons who have been in
positions of authority over him have abused him and his trust, for their own
purposes.”
Omar’s lawyers, including the ones he just fired, claim he has endured
bouts of systematic torture: beaten. Drugged. Short-shackled to the floor for
hours at a time. Used as a “human mop” to clean up his own urine. The abuse
allegations have — despite his actions and his infamous kin — transformed Omar
into a cause célèbre, Exhibit A of all that is wrong with the war on terror.
Not even daddy could have imagined such a public relations coup.
But then the Khadrs showed up at the Brampton courthouse, proclaiming
their support for the Toronto 17. “Everybody was angry with us again,” Maha
says. Zaynab has been to every hearing so far, sitting with the wives and
children of some of the accused. New to the public spotlight, the others seem
to look to her for advice. “These people are Muslims,” Zaynab says. “They are
my friends. I believe in their innocence, and just like I would love to have
someone stand with me when I was in a time of need, I will stand with those
people when they are in a time of need. And I will support them. Until they
prove them guilty, they are innocent — by law and by religion.”
The Khadrs first met some of the accused two years ago, when Kareem
returned home. Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal saw the news reports on television and
looked up Maha’s number in the telephone book, offering any help she could. Her
husband, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, is now among the accused, one of the six suspects
who allegedly planned to use truck bombs to destroy buildings in downtown
Toronto. Two of the group’s alleged ringleaders — Fahim Ahmad, 21, and Zakaria
Amara, 20 — were also friends of the family. Before the arrests, their wives
had helped organize fundraisers for the Khadrs.
The Globe and Mail has also reported that some of the women were regular
contributors to a virulently anti-Western online chat room, where they spoke of
holy war and their hatred for Canada. “If he ever refuses a clear opportunity
to leave for jihad, then I want the chance of divorce,” wrote Amara’s wife,
Nada Farooq. Earlier this month, Farooq posted a jailhouse letter from her
husband. “I beg you,” Amara wrote. “DO NOT FEEL SORRY FOR ME. I’m Allah’s slave
and he does whatever he wishes with me.”
“They were very nice, friendly people,” Zaynab says. “Very, very nice
people.” She insists she had no indication that her friends were planning an
attack. If anything, they only spoke of how difficult it is to be a committed
Muslim in Canada, where the distractions of modern life often clash with Islam.
“In school, they have to go through a lot of peer pressure just to be a Muslim
and be proud of who they are,” she says. “They wished that one day they would
be able to go through life with their families somewhere where it would be
easier for them to practice their religion.”
As for the charges, Zaynab says the whole thing is “ridiculous.”
Paintball guns. Ammonium nitrate. Beheading the Prime Minister. “It is just
unbelievable,” she says.
“I don’t believe it,” Kareem adds.
“I don’t believe it,” Kareem adds.
“They are making a fool out of RCMP, CSIS and all the intelligence,”
Maha says. “If there is somebody planning something, he is out there doing
something, and they are capturing all these very naive, young boys.”
“Yeah,” Kareem says. “And whoever is actually doing something is going
to do it.”
“With these guys, now that they’re arrested, I’m pretty sure it goes through their mind that they wish they’d done something,” Zaynab says, a few minutes later.
“To justify all the suffering,” her mother adds.
“With these guys, now that they’re arrested, I’m pretty sure it goes through their mind that they wish they’d done something,” Zaynab says, a few minutes later.
“To justify all the suffering,” her mother adds.
“In their minds,” Zaynab continues, “maybe it would have been worthwhile
that we’d done something, so at least then we’d be punished for something we
did, instead of being punished for something we didn’t do.”
Like his three older brothers, Kareem spent time in Afghanistan’s
training camps, washing clothes and firing Kalashnikovs. “A lot of our friends
used to go there, so we were like: ‘Dad, I want to go there because of my
friends,'” he says. “There is nothing else to do there, right, and those camps
were the best way to get out of trouble.” Today, Kareem attends a Toronto high
school, two years away from his diploma.
He spends hours on the computer, follows the NBA (he’s a Miami Heat fan)
and plays competitive wheelchair basketball. “I’m good,” he says, smiling.
Recently, he tried out for an all-star rep team, but the coach cut him. He has
no proof, though he is pretty sure his last name had a lot to do with it. “They
didn’t say that,” he says, “but there were players that I played better than.”
“I have been to many games, and he is good,” Zaynab adds. “But he’s
never picked.”
The West has certainly rubbed off on Kareem. His clothes. His cellphone. Shaquille O’Neal. Like all mothers, Maha worries about her teenage boy, about how much time he spends on the Internet and what he watches on TV. She wishes, too, that he would practise his walking exercises a little more often.
The West has certainly rubbed off on Kareem. His clothes. His cellphone. Shaquille O’Neal. Like all mothers, Maha worries about her teenage boy, about how much time he spends on the Internet and what he watches on TV. She wishes, too, that he would practise his walking exercises a little more often.
But her worries go beyond the typical angst of most Canadian mothers.
She dreads, every day, that the Mounties will kick down her door. That Omar
will never leave Guantánamo. That Abdullah will be extradited to the U.S. That
Zaynab will be arrested. “Every time I’m late, she’s calling me, making sure
I’m okay,” Zaynab says.
A few months ago, Maha accompanied her granddaughter on a school field
trip to the Ontario Science Centre. At the end of the day, the class went to
the closet to retrieve their coats. “Only my jacket was gone!” Maha says.
“There were 30 kids with their teachers, and only my jacket was gone!” Must
have been the infidels.
“We can’t even talk at home without knowing that everything we say or do
is being watched and monitored,” Zaynab says.
“The phone is bugged,” Maha adds. “You feel so helpless.”
“Can you imagine,” Zaynab continues, “that if you ever wanted to say
something that you think they don’t need to know, that you would have to go
outside to say it? It’s ridiculous. And we’re supposed to be living in a free
country.”
“Sometimes,” Maha says, “when I am very, very angry, I say: ‘May God
punish them severe. Whoever caused Omar and Abdullah this pain, may God punish
them so severe.’ I’m a mother — I don’t care, you can write this or say it —
I’m really hurt in my heart for my children. And when I see Abdul-Kareem
crawling at this age, or having to catheterize and all this mess, I really pray
really hard that God punishes them. And when they captured Abdullah that day, I
prayed really hard, really loud: ‘May God burn your heart!’ I prayed so hard,
so loud, that I wanted to make sure they hear that. I know many of them don’t
believe in God or anything. But I do.”
It is, for the most part, a lonely life for the Khadrs. Years ago, when
the kids returned home for a visit, fellow Muslims were envious, impressed that
they were willing to leave Canada to help the poor. “All of a sudden now,
everybody stays away from the places you go, doesn’t want to talk to you,
doesn’t want to know you,” Zaynab says. “Even people who know you pretend they
don’t.” Old friends from Ottawa stopped calling. At the mosque, some
worshippers look the other way when they see the Khadrs coming. “I go to
school, he goes to school,” Zaynab says, pointing at her brother. “We talk to
people at the school. But do we have friends? No.”
“We had friends,” Kareem says.
“We had,” Zaynab agrees. “Now they put them in jail. Whatever friends we
had are gone.”
The Khadrs like to portray themselves as the victims of an Islamophobic
conspiracy, one that stretches from the courts of law to the basketball court.
They honestly cannot fathom why the RCMP watches them so closely. “I’m one of
those persons that if you don’t cross my line, I don’t cross yours,” Zaynab
says. “But if people hurt me, if you really cross my line, I probably would.”
When asked if fellow Canadians should consider her a threat, she laughs. “I wish,”
she says, quickly correcting herself. “No, I’m not.”
Be Sociable, Share!
------------------------
Friday, July 18, 2008
Hypocrisy of the
"Repatriate Omar Khadr to Canada" Movement
As soon as the Gitmo interrogation tape
of Omar Khadr hit the Internet, the blogosphere was flooded with demands to
repatriate him to Canada. This wave is reminiscent of a Soviet campaign to free
Luis Corvalán from the "fascist regime" of Augusto Pinochet thirty
five years ago. The scenario is strikingly similar. A "victim" held
by "fascist regimes" this time run by Bush and Harper, and a public
outcry for justice. Except for the fact that Luis Corvalán didn't kill anyone
and didn't fight for a terrorist group that wants to impose Sharia.
The "repatriate Khadr" crowd describes him as "a child", "a kid", "a boy", and even "a torture victim", with no facts to substantiate the torture claims notwithstanding. They complain about Khadr being mistreated, again, without anything to back up their claims. Some of them are outraged about "child abuse." And they all scream for justice.
They want justice? OK, let's talk about JUSTICE. What about justice for Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer, who was (according to an eyewitness) murdered by this "child"? What about justice for Tabitha Speer, who is a widow because of this "kid"? What about justice for Taryn and Tanner Speer, who are left without a father by this "a boy"? And what about all those Afghani civilians and NATO troops who are a little bit safer because this "torture victim" is behind bars? How many of these "repatriate Khadr" hypocrites concern themselves with justice for real victims? In literally hundreds of posts, we couldn't find a single one.
One would ask, what is the reason for this idiocy? The answer is simple. Ignorance. Complete and utter ignorance. Let's forget for a second that Omar Khadr killed Christopher Speer. Let's forget that Khadr's father was an al Qaeda financier. Let's forget that Khadr's family is known for it being al Qaeda sympathizers. Let's just remember what this "child" was fighting for in Afghanistan.
The "repatriate Khadr" crowd describes him as "a child", "a kid", "a boy", and even "a torture victim", with no facts to substantiate the torture claims notwithstanding. They complain about Khadr being mistreated, again, without anything to back up their claims. Some of them are outraged about "child abuse." And they all scream for justice.
They want justice? OK, let's talk about JUSTICE. What about justice for Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer, who was (according to an eyewitness) murdered by this "child"? What about justice for Tabitha Speer, who is a widow because of this "kid"? What about justice for Taryn and Tanner Speer, who are left without a father by this "a boy"? And what about all those Afghani civilians and NATO troops who are a little bit safer because this "torture victim" is behind bars? How many of these "repatriate Khadr" hypocrites concern themselves with justice for real victims? In literally hundreds of posts, we couldn't find a single one.
One would ask, what is the reason for this idiocy? The answer is simple. Ignorance. Complete and utter ignorance. Let's forget for a second that Omar Khadr killed Christopher Speer. Let's forget that Khadr's father was an al Qaeda financier. Let's forget that Khadr's family is known for it being al Qaeda sympathizers. Let's just remember what this "child" was fighting for in Afghanistan.
This is what Taliban-imposed Sharia looks like in real life
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Why don't all of you, bleeding heart demagogues go to Afghanistan and spend a day in a Taliban-controlled territory? And let's talk about Khadr when you get back. If you get back.
I.A.
MASH
----------------
THX CAROLYN 4 THE SHARE- CAN U IMAGINE IMMIGRATING 2 CANADA.... AND NOT...LIVING...IN CANADA???? WTF
BEST HISTORY ON OMAR KHADR...
1977--
Khadr family emigrates from Egypt, settles in southern Ontario
1985 --
Patriarch Ahmen Said Khadr moves to Pakistan at the height of the Soviet war in
Afghanistan, meets Osama bin Laden.
Sept.
19 1986-- Omar Khadr is born in Ontario.
1986--
The Khadr family moves back to Pakistan, where the Ahmed Said Khadr works for
an organization financed partly by the Canadian International Development
Agency
1992--
Ahmed Said Khadr returns to Toronto after his leg is injured in an explosion
1995--
Ahmed Said Khadr is arrested for his alleged role in the bombing of the
Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. He is later released after Jean Chretien
intervenes on his behalf.
1996--
Family returns to Canada, but Ahmed Said Khadr leaves again for Pakistan,
forming his own humanitarian relief group.
The
family moves to Jalabad in Taliban-controlledeastern Afghanistan, where they
live in Osama bin Laden’s camp.
1996–
Omar and his brothers are taken to meet Al Qaeda leaders for training
The
family makes annual trips to Canada to raise money and collect supplies.
1999--
Khadr family moves to Kabul, where Taliban have taken control after a long
civil war.
Sept.
11, 2001-- Terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Nov.
2001-- The U.S.-backed Northern Alliance rebels chase the Taliban out of Kabul.
Omar Khadr flees to his father's orphanage in Logar, Afghanistan.
June
2002 -- After training on AK-47s, Soviet PKs and rocket-propelled grenades,
Khadr, works as a translator for alQaeda and conducts a surveillance mission.
Oct.
2001-- Ahmed Said Khadr is named on a list of suspected terrorists wanted by
the FBI
July
2002-- According to statements of fact later read at his trial, Omar
Khadr,threw a Russian-made F1 grenade from behind the wall of a compound in
Afghanistan.
The
grenade killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer.
Omar
Khadr is captured by the U.S. military after its forces bombed the compound. A
firefight led to the death of a U.S. soldier and Omar being severely wounded.
He lost sight in one eye. First detained at Bagram Air Base.
Oct.
2002-- Khadr is transferred to Guantanamo Bay
Oct.
2003-- Omar’s father is killed by Pakistani forces.
COMMENT:
Great
post!
----------------------------
" Omar Khadr's millions: The fight for
financial damages...
Omar Khadr
will be a free man one day. Even if he serves every last second of his current
sentence-eight years for the murder of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, in ...
---------------
" Omar Khadr sues for $60 million - Macleans.ca
Omar Khadr
sues for $60 million. Lawyers accuse Canadian government of a 'conspiracy' with
U.S. to keep Khadr behind bars
-------------------
Omar Khadr is NOT a ‘Child Soldier’ – as per UN laws
August 25, 2009 — xanthippa
Just about everyone has heard of Omar
Khard: the one Canadian languishing in Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
Most people – whatever their views and opinions are on
the circumstances that lead to his current predicament – agree that his
situation is quite tragic. The kid never had a chance to grow up
‘normally’.
Born into a family which
was legally in Canada, emotionally in Pakistan and philosophically in 8th
century Arabia, his childhood could not be considered ‘normal’ by any
standards.
Both his parents were religious fanatics (his mother
still is, his father gave his life to conduct violent jihad). He was
physically bumped around, from living in the ‘Secular West’ at some points to a
Muslim
school in Pakistan to terrorist training camps. His
sister was given in marriage at the age of 15 to an Al-Qaeda buddy
of her father (the wedding is said to have been attended by Osama himself), his
brothers actively conducted violent jihad (not all survived), and so on.
It really is a sad story. I can understand why it
pulls at all our collective heartstrings!
Currently, the public debate is focused on what
is to be done with young Omar now?
This is a very, very important decision: whatever
action is taken (on not taken) on behalf of Omar Khadr will set THE legal
precedent for future situation that are similar.
So, let us get it right!
In order to make the best possible decision, we must
objectively examine what Omar Khadr is – and what he is not.
This is an essential step, because it will define under
which circumstances the legal precedent set by the ‘Omar Khadr case’ will be
applicable.
The most common description of Omar Khadr one hears in
the MSM (mainstream media) – as well as one often repeated by his defense
lawyers – is that Omar Khadr is a ‘Child Soldier’.
So, let us examine if this is the case:
Is Omar Khadr a ‘Child Soldier’?
The definition of ‘Child Soldier’ has two parts:
‘Child’ and ‘Soldier’.
First: is Omar Khadr a ‘Soldier’?
No, he is not.
At least, not according to the UN laws on the matter (or
any other law I am aware of which defines who is, and who is not, a ‘soldier’).
The UN laws were written in order to protect the innocent
civilians who get in the way of a war first, then the protection of
legitimate soldiers second. And, they are very clear on who is and who is
not a ‘soldier’ (again – basic Wikipedia search provides clear answers – but
much more material confirming this is easily available through any major search
engine…):
‘To qualify under the Third Geneva Convention, a
combatant must have conducted military operations according to the
laws and customs of war, be part of a chain of command, wear a “fixed distinctive
marking, visible from a distance” and bear arms openly.’
Omar Khadr, unfortunately, does not satisfy these
qualifications.
Not only was he not a part of a recognized military
‘chain of command’, and not wearing any ‘badges’ or ‘distinctive markings’ that
could, even remotely, be construed as ‘uniform’ or ‘fixed distinctive
marking': the crime he is accused of having committed is against the laws
and customs of war. ( I can expand on this, at length, if asked, in the
comments sections.)
Therefore, Omar Khadr DOES NOT satisfy the qualifications
of having the status of a ‘soldier’. Therefore, he cannot be treated as a
‘soldier': a ‘Child Soldier’, an ‘adult soldier’, or any other kind of
‘soldier’.
But, even if Omar Khadr were a ‘Soldier':
would he qualify as a ‘Child Soldier’?
This is a more difficult question – but there is a legal
answer!
Omar Khadr was aged 15 when he was detained by UN troops
and when the premeditated murder of a UN non-combatant medic, which he is
accused of having committed, occurred.
Different people mature at different rates: at 15,
some people really are still children while others are quite adult. Both
individual maturing rates and cultural influences are important in determining
if a 15-year-old is ‘an adult’ or ‘a child’. What does the law say?
Omar Khadr straddled two cultures:
· In Canada, a
15-year old is, legally, a child.
· Still,
15-year-olds are able to become emancipated, and legally become adults.
· Under some
circumstances, non-emancipated 15-year-olds are charged with crimes as adults –
so the ‘legal precedent’ can be applied both ways: it is a bit of a legal
‘gray area’ in Canada.
· In Islamist
culture, a 15-year-old is considered to be an adult, without any reservations.
· The Khadr
family certainly considers 15 years of age to be ‘adult’ – that
is the age at which their daughter was given away in marriage!
It is obvious that in his own eyes, as well as according
to the culture of his family, Omar Khadr is ‘an adult’. And, in our
multicultural society, would it not be offensive to dismiss Omar Khadr’s
minority cultural view of his status at that time?
OK, ok
– so, the ‘multiculturalism’ thing is kind of messed up – and we all know
it. Let’s look elsewhere:
What does the International Human Rights Law have to say
on the subject? (The following is a cut-and-paste of what Wikipedia has
to say on this: I usually like to paraphrase things, but I could not hope
to make it more clear than they had…)
International humanitarian law
According to Article 77.2 of the Additional Protocol
I to the Geneva Conventions of 12
August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed
Conflicts, adopted in 1977:
‘The Parties to the conflict shall take all feasible
measures in order that children who have not attained the age of fifteen years
do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain
from recruiting them into their armed forces. In recruiting among those persons
who have attained the age of fifteen years but who have not attained the age of
eighteen years, the Parties to the conflict shall endeavour to give priority to
those who are oldest.’
Well, that seems rather clear: once a person has
reached the age of 15, he/she cannot be considered to be a ‘Child Soldier’ –
even though it’s better to recruit people who are over the age of 18….
15-year-olds are ‘regular soldiers’!
Omar Khadr HAD ‘attained the age of fifteen years’ -
so he IS, according to international law, ‘regular soldier’!
In other words, legally, Omar Khadr CANNOT
be considered a ‘Child Soldier’, because he is not a ‘Child’: he
would have had to have been FOURTEEN years of age or younger in order to
be considered a ‘Child Soldier’!
OK – so we are nowhere closer to the answer of what Omar
Khadr actually is: but, I have (hopefully) demonstrated that whatever he
is, he is NOT a ‘Child Soldier’!
I know – the facts of the situation are unlikely to
affect the direction of the public debate…. I have no illusions about it.
People who point out the laws and the rules are nowhere near as interesting –
and nowhere near listened to – as people who play on our emotions…
But, we MUST TRY, mustn’t we?
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13 Comments »
13 Responses to “Omar Khadr is NOT a ‘Child Soldier’ – as
per UN laws”
[…] Omar Khadr is NOT a “Child Soldier” – as per UN Laws.
‘To qualify under the Third Geneva Convention, a combatant must have conducted
military operations according to the laws and customs of war, be part of a
chain of command, wear a “fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance”
and bear arms openly.’…Not only was he not a part of a recognized military
‘chain of command’, and not wearing any ‘badges’ or ‘distinctive markings’ that
could, even remotely, be construed as ‘uniform’ or ‘fixed distinctive
marking’: the crime he is accused of having committed is against the laws
and customs of war. ( I can expand on this, at length, if asked, in the
comments sections.)….The Khadr family certainly considers 15 years of age to be
‘adult’ – that is the age at which their daughter was given away in marriage!
[…]
Write to your MP’s, Khadr’s mother should be charged with
breaking the law by allowing, consenting to and encouraging her son to become a
member of a terrorist group as a minor. We could maybe win that case if it came
about. Now for the lashing… This is a poorly researched blog.
First I should say that you should never paraphrase when
quoting from a statute or a convention. I also a found factual problem in your
reply to another poster. The UN never authorized the US invasion of
Afghanistan. The war is under the authority of NATO. The US and Britain also have
or had, campaigns that were independent of NATO and subject exclusively to
their own authority.
I am not in the slightest sympathetic to Omar Khadr or
his family who are certainly not Canadians and don’t deserve to bear that
title. However I don’t think your legal analysis is anywhere rigorous enough to
reach a sound conclusion.
The USA ratified the in 2002.
Article 4 (1) of this document states that “Armed groups
that are distinct from the armed forces of a State should not, under any
circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of 18
years.”
Omar Khadr was 15.
Article 6 (3) states “States Parties shall take all
feasible measures to ensure that persons within their jurisdiction recruited or
used in hostilities contrary to the present Protocol are demobilized or
otherwise released from service. State Parties shall, when necessary, accord to
such persons all appropriate assistance for their physical and psychological
recovery and their social reintegration.”
I think, and I could be wrong, that Omar Khadr was tried
and admitted to being a member of Al Qaeda, which is a non-state group. That
means upon capturing him, the US would have to give him special consideration
as to his age as per sections 4(1) and 6(3). So while he might not technically
be a ‘child soldier’ as defined in the Geneva Conventions, he would get the
same treatment as a child soldier with “all appropriate assistance for…. their
social reintegration”.
In other words, he might not technically meet the
separate, stand alone definitions of ‘child’ and ‘soldier’, but that doesn’t
mean necessarily mean he isn’t a ‘child soldier’. Even if he isn’t one, he
would still be required to be treated as one by the US upon his capture.
You have got to be way more careful in the way you argue
when you are dealing with law. I don’t know any law professors in my program
that make statements about issues as complex and nuanced as these with the same
amount of certainty as you do on this blog. You failed to check the additional
protocols of the Geneva Conventions which had been ratified by the USA.
There are also all of these treaties:
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR),
• Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),
• UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty (UN Rules for the
Protection of Juveniles),
• UN Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (The Riyadh Guidelines)
• UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing
Rules)
• Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Standard Minimum Rules)
• Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or
Imprisonment (Body of Principles).
• Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),
• UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty (UN Rules for the
Protection of Juveniles),
• UN Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (The Riyadh Guidelines)
• UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (Beijing
Rules)
• Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Standard Minimum Rules)
• Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or
Imprisonment (Body of Principles).
Which you would have to look through to be sure about the
statements you are trying to make. There is a reason that governments pay
lawyers in their foreign affairs departments millions of dollars a year. It is
because the answer to a relatively simple question “who is a child soldier” can
be very complex.
When talking about the law, get used to using phrases
like “I think”, “maybe” and “upon my consideration of the relevant laws, which
may be incomplete, my preliminary opinion is…”.
Whoops, I mistakenly omitted something, The USA ratified
the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights
of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict in 2002.
of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict in 2002.
This is where you find the aforementioned articles 4(1)
and 6(3).
Sorry about the mistake
Bruce: Your comments are most helpful, refering to actual
relevant documents rather than secondary source propaganda and “straight from
the gut opinions as proposed by their professors” used by other commenters in
this section. You will go far. Thank you for your post.
[…] THE VILE AL-QAEDA WARRIOR Omar Khadr is NOT a ‘Child
Soldier’ – as per UN laws …. […]
Who are child soldiers?
While there is no precise definition, the Coalition
considers a child soldier any person under the age of 18 who is a member of or
attached to government armed forces or any other regular or irregular armed
force or armed political group, whether or not an armed conflict exists. Child
soldiers perform a range of tasks including participation in combat, laying
mines and explosives; scouting, spying, acting as decoys, couriers or guards;
training, drill or other preparations; logistics and support functions, portering,
cooking and domestic labour; and sexual slavery or other recruitment for sexual
purposes.
i trust a definition written by a trusted and impartial
source rather than your obviously biased opinion.
Xanthippa says:
You stated: Who are child
soldiers? While there is no precise definition…’
Well, actually, that is not
correct.
To the contrary: the United Nations
– whose jurisdiction the military action in Afghanistan falls – have a very
specific definition of ‘Who are child soldiers’. And, Omar Khadr does not
satisfy 2 of the criteria necessary for him to be a ‘child soldier’ under the
UN definition thereof. That was rather the point of the post…
He fails to satisfy two of the
criteria: age (Omar Khadr, at the time the incident occurred, was too old, as
per UN’s definition) and markings (he did not wear any markings which would identify
him as a member of any army, something that is 100% required under the UN’s
rules to be considered a ‘soldier’ and therefore be eligible to be protected by
any of the Geneva Convention rules…).
Look – the UN is the one who sent
the armies into Afghanistan.
The war there is under the UN’s
jurisdiction.
The UN has a very, very specific
definition of who is and who is not a ‘child soldier’.
Omar Khadr is not a ‘child soldier’
according to the UN’s definition thereof.
Anyone can make up definitions of
‘stuff’ and put them up onto a website – but, that does not mean that such
definitions (even if done up with the best of intentions by people or
organizations who truly care) have any legal standing.
When we engage in a public debate
on a subject, we must use the applicable definitions of terms, or our debate
will be devoid of meaning. After all, if we use the same word, but we each
understand it to mean a different thing, we’ll never be able to understand each
other’s side…and if we don’t understand each other, we will not be able to
negotiate a mutually acceptable solution.
That is why it is essential that
people use the terms in the way that they legally apply.
If you disagree with the UN’s
definition of ‘child soldier’ – that is a very valid point and I would support
you in this 100%. I am not too keen on it myself.
But, that is a different debate
altogether: one about lobbying the UN to change its definition of ‘child
soldier’ – and NOT a debate whether or not Omar Khadr qualified as ‘child
soldier’ under the currently existing, very specific definition the UN has now.
The US-decision to treat Omar Khadr as an adult was based
on politics, not international law. The courts in Canada have affirmed again
this year that Oamr Khadr’s rights were violated. Harper’s refusal to bring
Omar home is also just about politics. Internationa law is on Mr. Khadr’s side.
Khadr’s lawyers have argued that the fact that their client was only 15 at the time of battle is crucial; so is the fact that he was only 17, and still a child, when he was sleep-deprived for weeks in Guantanamo Bay in order to make him more willing to talk to investigators, as recently released documents have suggested.
But military judge Col. Peter Brownback previously ruled that the defence cannot raise matters of international law in Khadr’s trial. The trial will therefore only be considering the events that occurred on the day that Khadr allegedly killed Speer.
Khadr’s lawyers have argued that the fact that their client was only 15 at the time of battle is crucial; so is the fact that he was only 17, and still a child, when he was sleep-deprived for weeks in Guantanamo Bay in order to make him more willing to talk to investigators, as recently released documents have suggested.
But military judge Col. Peter Brownback previously ruled that the defence cannot raise matters of international law in Khadr’s trial. The trial will therefore only be considering the events that occurred on the day that Khadr allegedly killed Speer.
“Under international law, the USA should have taken full
account of Omar Khadr’s age at the time of his arrest, and treated him
according to principles of juvenile justice,” Rob Freer said.
“It utterly failed to do so, instead holding him for more
than two years virtually incommunicado, subjecting him to repeated
interrogations without access to a lawyer or the courts, and is now putting him
through a military commission trial that would fail to meet international
standards even if it were being applied to accusations against an adult.”
After eight years of ignoring its human rights obligations, the USA is now set to try Omar Khadr under procedures that fail to meet international fair trial standards”, Rob Freer continued. “History will not judge its actions kindly”.
After eight years of ignoring its human rights obligations, the USA is now set to try Omar Khadr under procedures that fail to meet international fair trial standards”, Rob Freer continued. “History will not judge its actions kindly”.
In late 2003, the United States released three children
(ages 13-15) detained at
Guantanamo to UNICEF to enable them to receive rehabilitation and reintegration assistance in
Afghanistan. However, the United States government has not made any such rehabilitation
assistance available to Omar Khadr, nor acknowledged his possible status as a child used in
armed conflict.
No international criminal tribunal established under the laws of war, from Nurember forward, has prosecuted a former child soldier for violating the laws of war. There is an overriding presumption in international law that any exception be expressly authorized. The
Special Court for Sierra Leone (“SCSL”) is one such exceptional case and its jurisdiction was
limited to promoting the child’s “rehabilitation, reintegration into and assumption of a
constructive role in society.” Even with these qualifications, the SCSL has made it its policy not
to prosecute any former child soldiers.
In 2000, the United States signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights
of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and ratified it in December 2002.
Guantanamo to UNICEF to enable them to receive rehabilitation and reintegration assistance in
Afghanistan. However, the United States government has not made any such rehabilitation
assistance available to Omar Khadr, nor acknowledged his possible status as a child used in
armed conflict.
No international criminal tribunal established under the laws of war, from Nurember forward, has prosecuted a former child soldier for violating the laws of war. There is an overriding presumption in international law that any exception be expressly authorized. The
Special Court for Sierra Leone (“SCSL”) is one such exceptional case and its jurisdiction was
limited to promoting the child’s “rehabilitation, reintegration into and assumption of a
constructive role in society.” Even with these qualifications, the SCSL has made it its policy not
to prosecute any former child soldiers.
In 2000, the United States signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights
of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and ratified it in December 2002.
By the way: Tha war in Afghanistan is a US/Nato
operation.
Xanthippa says:
The war in Afghanistan is a UN operation: they asked Nato to ‘put boots on the ground’. US is there as part of NATO.
The war in Afghanistan is a UN operation: they asked Nato to ‘put boots on the ground’. US is there as part of NATO.
If you put as much effort into
checking your facts and self-education as you put into ideological rhetoric,
perhaps you might get somewhere. That, of course, presumes that you would
permit a glimmer of reason in…
“The war in Afghanistan is a UN operation”
“If you put as much effort into checking your facts and self-education as you put into ideological rhetoric…”
….your ignorance is breathtaking.
“If you put as much effort into checking your facts and self-education as you put into ideological rhetoric…”
….your ignorance is breathtaking.
The UN didn’t even pass a resolution on the Afghan
conflict until Dec. of 2001, almost 2 months after US forces began Operation
Enduring Freedom with the assistance of British forces and other NATO members
who volunteered. At that point, the UN Security Council authorized the creation
of ISAF which was to assist the Afghan Interim Authority to maintain security,
but remained separate from US-led military operations in Afghanistan.
The UN was created and still functions to promote and
maintain peace in the world, not help wage war. The UN Charter, which the US
ratified, states that all member states are to resolve their differences
through peaceful means and that members shall not use military force except in
self-defense. Ergo, the UN security council, nor the UN, ever authorized the
US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
When NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003, it was largely
to give some sort of international legitimacy to the conflict and to convince
tacit observers like yourself that the UN supports the war in Afghanistan,
which it does not, nor any other war in the world….that’s not what the UN does.
Perhaps it is you who should check your facts?
Xan says:
Fact: US led the international forces invasion of Iraq,
not Afghanistan
Fact: the UN gave NATO the task of going into Afghanistan
Fact: the UN does NOT function, or the whole Iraq mess
would never have happened. Passing resolutions without any intent or ability to
enforce them makes things worse, not better
Fact: the world would be a much better AND safer place
WITHOUT the UN
Fact: Canada would be better off if it resigned from the
UN – the sooner, the better
If the rights of the Geneva Convention are not applicable
to irregular soldiers, that cuts both ways. If you wish coalition irregulars
(CIA, FBI, informants, diplomats, etc.) to be treated humanely then treat the
other side so as well.
Your arguement that Omar (along with the others at camp x-ray) can be treated inhumanely because he was not in uniform is zero sum and ends with torture on all sides (and there are sides, whether wearing uniforms or not).
Your arguement that Omar (along with the others at camp x-ray) can be treated inhumanely because he was not in uniform is zero sum and ends with torture on all sides (and there are sides, whether wearing uniforms or not).
Xanthippa says:
But, I do think it OUGHT TO cut both ways!
The Geneva convention is written specifically so that
spies and combatants who hide among the population are completely stripped of
any rights and protections – and that is a good thing! It is meant to
discourage this behaviour!
Any humane treatment these people receive is therefore a
privilege, not a right.
Yes, of course, CIA operatives would ALSO fall into this
category – and I fully agree that they SHOULD! Their presence among the general
populace endangers ‘regular people’ – they have to pay the price for this. And,
to be fair, most spies fully know this and expect nothing less and nothing
more. That is how it ought to be.
As for collaborators – that is a different category
altogether, as they are not combatants.
Diplomats – come on! There are specific international
laws that govern the treatment of diplomats. Tossing that in here is a bit
disingenuous!
Now, I am not stating that ANY ‘detainees’ ‘ought to’ be
treated inhumanely.
What I AM saying is that there are two specific rules to
be applied here.
One is to ‘non-military combatants’ – people who took up
arms and hid among the populace. These do NOT have ANY rights under the Geneva
Convention, specifically in order to discourage this type of behaviour which
endangers the populace. Being treated humanely is a privilege, not a right.
The other is a set of rules regarding ‘non-combatant, but
hostile civilians’. The Geneva Convention provides for the treatment of
civilian populations which are not militarized, but are actively hostile to the
troops in the area. This population, according to the Geneva Convention, can be
‘detained’. In detention, these people must be fed, provided medical care, etc.
– but they may be moved out of the area of engagement and held in detention
until after the war is over. Not nice, but true.
But, the best thing would be for you to read the Geneva
Convention – it is available online. That is the best way to learn all the
rules which govern the various situations.
And, you will remove the fear that I (or others) are
somehow attempting to manipulate the information…. I have no desire to do that
– but it angers me when people have misconceptions about what the Geneva
Convention is and what it says and then get belligerent when their
misconceptions are not lived up to….
I am also not saying that I think anyone SHOULD be
treated inhumanely. Not in the least. ‘SHOULD’ is not the same as ‘HAVE TO’.
What I AM saying is that under the rules set out by the
Geneva Convention, these people (like Omar Khadr) DO NOT HAVE TO be treated
humanely. That is, that there are no international laws or rules which would
compel the US to treat these combatants humanely.
To argue (as many people have) that ‘under the Geneva
Convention, these people’s rights have been broken’ is patently incorrect. It
is at best an ignorance of the rules – or an intentional lie and manipulation.
Either way, that claim is false and ought to be revealed as such.
That is what I am saying.
I think that if we treat others nicely, even if we do not
have to, it is a reflection of our nature.
It would be nice if our nature were good.
But that is different, very different, from saying humane
treatment is Khadr’s ‘right’. It is not his ‘right’ – he gave that ‘right’ up
when he murdered a medic in cold blood. Yes, I do think he should be treated
humanely – but that is a privilege, not a right, for him, under the rules of
the Geneva Convention.
When we confuse ‘privileges’ and ‘rights’, we devalue
both!
Oh dear. This analysis gets a failing grade. Best remove
this blog item, take courses in international human rights and international
humanitarian law, and then rewrite the article completely.
Your UN defenition of a child soldier is wrong so your
points on him not being one are compleatly incorrect, a child soldier is
defined by the UN to be “A child soldier is any person under 18 years of age
who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in
any capacity, including but not limited to cooks, porters, messengers and
anyone accompanying such groups, other than family members. The definition
includes girls recruited for sexual purposes and for forced marriage. It does
not, therefore, only refer to a child who is carrying or has carried arms.”
And by that definition he is clearly and ireafutably a
child soldier. do some fucking research before you spread your redneck
Conservative shit all over the place!
Bruce
According to the Chairperson of the Committee on the
Rights of the Child, Ms. Yanghee Lee*, Somalia and the United States have yet
to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The two are the only
countries that have not ratified the 1989 Convention that sets out economic,
social, cultural, civil and political rights as well as special protection
measures for all persons under the age of 18 years.
That was announced in October, 2010. The US drafted it,
but did not ratify it.
[…] A similar exploration of this issue. […]
---------------
The latest on Omar Khadr
If you’ve
been following the Omar Khadr saga in Canada, you’ve undoubtedly heard about
the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Canadian government jurisdiction in
foreign affairs with respect to the repatriation of Khadr. The Minister of
Justice released the following statement yesterday,
“In its
ruling, the Supreme Court recognized the constitutional responsibility of the
executive to make decisions on matters of foreign affairs, given the complex
and ever-changing circumstances of diplomacy, and the need to take into account
Canada’s broader interests. The Supreme Court did not require the Government to
ask for accused terrorist Omar Khadr’s return.
“In response
to the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Government of Canada today delivered a
diplomatic note to the Government of the United States formally seeking
assurances that any evidence or statements shared with U.S. authorities as a
result of the interviews of Mr. Khadr by Canadian agents and officials in 2003
and 2004 not be used against him by U.S. authorities in the context of
proceedings before the Military Commission or elsewhere.
“Omar Khadr
faces very serious charges, including murder, attempted murder, conspiracy,
material support for terrorism, and spying. The Government of Canada continues
to provide consular services to Mr. Khadr.”
The part
about the formal request seeking assurances regarding evidence is interesting.
The Supreme Court ruled that Khadr’s Charter rights were violated as Canadian
officials were party to an illegal interrogation. A formal request from the
government to for the US to reject evidence acquired in collaboration with
Canadians, may cure the breach of rights that the Supreme Court references.
Earlier
today, Khadr’s lawyers filed an injunction against
the formal request complaining that they were not first consulted on the
government’s plans. It seems that the ultimate goal for Team Khadr is
repatriation of the accused murderer. The legal reality is that the Supreme
Court did not compel the government to seek Khadr’s return and it is no secret
that this government will never do so. However, a future government may follow
this course of action. A request to expunge evidence only can help Khadr’s
case. Since repatriation is out of the question for the Harper government,
Khadr’s lawyers may have more hope waiting for an Ignatieff government than for
their client to face justice in the United States.
Khadr’s
supporters seek the 23 year old’s repatriation and reintegration into Canadian
society. In Toronto, this weekend a conference titled “Media War on Islam ” was
held at a Toronto-area Islamic Centre. Here’s an excerpt from the National Post,
Western
media have a “spiteful policy” toward Iran of inventing “fraudulent” news to
“increase false national expectation” and “encourage disturbance,” according to
the cultural attache in the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Hamid
Mohammadi said media deception has caused hatred and fear of Muslims by
presenting the “false belief that religion is incapable of running a country”
and that Iran is therefore illegitimate. He said the result has been political
“position changing” by Western countries against Muslims.
He quoted
an “American thinker,” whose name did not come clearly through his strong
accent, to the effect that “future wars are in the hands of the media, and
their words are more effective than bullets.”
Somehow,
his brief scripted remarks were among the least controversial at a conference
about the “Media War on Islam” on Sunday night at a Toronto-area Islamic
centre, in which the Christmas Day underwear bomber was described as the tool
of an Israeli plot; Barack Obama was referred to as “Mr. Black Man”; al-Qaeda
was called “the figment of the imagination of the West”; and a video was shown
that mocked 9/11 by putting the Muppet Show logo over slow-motion footage of
the second plane’s impact, with screams of terror for audio.
According
to the Post, the main organizer of the event was a man named Zafar Bangash.
Bangash is the director of the Islamic Society of York region. Here are a few
quotes from Zafar Bangash,
“Obama
could never have been elected president if he were not a slave of the American
establishment.”
“Under
Obama, there is a greater chance that the US would now launch wars in Africa. A
black man in the white house would be better able to pacify African-American
sentiment than a white man.”
“Immediately
after winning the Democratic Party nomination for president, he went to
prostrate before America’s real masters: the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee.”
“The first
appointment Obama made after winning the election was that of Rahm Israel
Emmanuel as his White House chief of staff.”
“Obama’s
presidency will not usher change; it will mean more of the same: American and
Zionist crimes under a different face with a smooth tongue.”
and other
troubling quotes from Bangash,
The West is
“murderous, racist and virulent”
Canada is a
“fully paid-up member of the Anglo-Saxon mafia, which is responsible for most
of the recorded genocides in the world”
“Muslims
must strive to overthrow the oppressive systems in their societies through
Islamic revolutions, and not by participating in fraudulent elections organized
by the elites operating through various political parties that actually divide
the people.”
“Muslims
have to get their own act together and unite their efforts under a single
leadership — that of the leading edge of the Islamic movement, Islamic Iran —
to work toward the common goals of the Ummah [Muslim World].”
So, what
does this have to do with Omar Khadr? Here’s Zafar Bangash with Khadr’s lawyer
Dennis Edney,
]
]
CTV
reported that Bangash made the following statement regarding Omar Khadr,
We have put
in place arrangements whereby [Omar Khadr] will be accommodated with another
family and he will be under close supervision as you can see this plan has the
support of members of different faith communities and we of course are one of
them, the Muslim community in Canada. He would be provided spiritual
counselling as well as assessed periodically to see what kind of progress he is
making.
That’s
quite a support group. Here’s the CBC’s report,
Later
Wednesday, Khadr’s lawyers and Muslim leaders unveiled details of a plan they
say will help Khadr gradually integrate back into Canadian society during a
news conference in Toronto.
The group,
which included lawyer Dennis Edney, Islamic Society of York Region president
Zafar Bangash and Canadian Arab Federation head Mohamed Boudjenane, urged
Harper to meet with them before Obama’s visit so he can pass along a formal
request.
“Call us.
Meet with us. Whatever it takes. But your obligation, Mr. Harper, is to bring
Omar home and allow him to heal,” said Edney.
The group
has signed and delivered a three-page letter to Harper outlining details of the
plan.
“We urge
you to act expeditiously and request the repatriation of Omar Khadr to Canada,
without further delay,” says the letter.
“Our plan
is designed to allow eminent organizations, representing a broad cross-section
of Canadian institutions and agencies, to take legal responsibility for
designing, implementing and supervising all aspects of Omar’s life in Canada,
until such time as he is able to become a fully functioning member of the
Canadian mosaic.”
Khadr will
live with host families and receive spiritual counselling from leading Muslim
clerics, it says. Much of his living costs will be paid for by dozens of
Canadian Muslim organizations.
--------------------
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Was Omar Khadr a “Child
Soldier?”
5 November
2007, 5, 8, 11, 12 & 13 May, 27 July 2008, 25 October, 22 November 2010, 19
November 2012 (Updated)
CBC Radio did a short feature on Omar Khadr this morning (November 5, 2007). He was described as a “child soldier.” His (recently updated and greatly expanded) story is well-documented on Wikipedia.
CBC Radio did a short feature on Omar Khadr this morning (November 5, 2007). He was described as a “child soldier.” His (recently updated and greatly expanded) story is well-documented on Wikipedia.
Omar
is the son of Ahmed Said Khadr,
one of Osama bin Laden’s
senior lieutenants. The family lived in Peshawar from 1985 through 1997, though
Omar was born in Toronto, and he and his family members are nominally
Canadians. Omar, along with his siblings, was trained by al Qaeda, under the direction of Osama
bin Laden. Omar’s family and bin Laden’s family associated with each other on a
somewhat regular basis.Omar, at age 15, was the only survivor in a July 27, 2002 battle with US forces in Afghanistan. There are various versions of his capture. In short, when found, he was originally reported to have killed one US soldier (Christopher James Speer) and injured three others. He was also injured in the confrontation, but then rescued and treated for his wounds. He was bleeding heavily, and would have died if not treated (according to the CBC).
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0470841176/ref=pe_4700_8863210_pe_snp_176
More recent documents
indicate that the grenade which injured the US soldiers, killing Sgt. Speer, may
have been thrown by another militant. US courts in other rulings have
determined that the throwing of the grenade was an act of terrorism, not an act
of war. Video footage reveals that Khadr assisted in the burying of landmines
and that he handled weapons and explosives with enthusiasm. Khadr's training by
al Qaeda and his active involvement in al Qaeda activities (including
statements of praise by Osama bin Laden) are well-documented. A recent biography (Guantanamo's
Child) has just been released, authored by Michelle Sheppard.
I have ordered but have not yet read the book, though I think the book's title
makes no secret of its intended progressive ideological slant.The point I wish to make – as indicated by the title of this piece – is not a semantic one.
Soldiers are members of armies who fight in battles and wars on behalf of governments or other entities having political status. If our country is at war with the army of which the soldier is a member, we have the option of making terms of peace or war with the political entity sponsoring that army. That is, we can declare war, propose a truce, offer our surrender, or declare victory following a decisive outcome in combat.
Al Qaeda is not a political entity with which it is possible to establish terms of either war or peace. We have no option as to engaging or not engaging, or even of surrendering to this “enemy.” This enemy has engaged the nations of the west on its own terms, focussing upon our full civilian population as its target. Al Qaeda is an unusual enemy in another respect, as it also has no army. Its agents – whether adults or children (and al Qaeda does not demonstrate concern as to whether its agents are adults or children) – are not soldiers. All, whether adults or children, and whether we find it palatable or not, are trained in the tactics of terror and violence.https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim0HsG6szRVB9umI_7RVGcL14pKFuZEvuvclISTlYjP0444v6JkoWnXtpAupkWETQmH0_Iiq51DSA1lZMgTWjRXW1MJBbHjnF9Y2crNXL0pSwY1vtL_2OSyWxVBhwyY94muabHiXVfzC5G/s1600-h/Iraq_al_Qaeda_connection.JPG
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim0HsG6szRVB9umI_7RVGcL14pKFuZEvuvclISTlYjP0444v6JkoWnXtpAupkWETQmH0_Iiq51DSA1lZMgTWjRXW1MJBbHjnF9Y2crNXL0pSwY1vtL_2OSyWxVBhwyY94muabHiXVfzC5G/s1600-h/Iraq_al_Qaeda_connection.JPGAl
Qaeda is a tightly-knit but widely dispersed totalitarian political movement
utilizing terrorism and suppression of opposition as its primary mode of
operation. Its adherents are agents of oppression, advocates of uniformity and
proponents of the elimination of competing belief systems on an international
scale.The terrorist participants in this illegal international organization train their children to be terrorists.https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkkAoY-oMojbZLkpPT8xVAD9AUz9mWrpcbbv_h1mrDb3JGgTtpclabfSdzO9bBazhpOpVSoMmyFQLx1Y__EWe_8UMpv97-zWsFhQBzAxcexJFE0EvPki49GLr98QUdsNjOVSOl32S0p4iE/s1600-h/rawa_handcut0_400x536.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkkAoY-oMojbZLkpPT8xVAD9AUz9mWrpcbbv_h1mrDb3JGgTtpclabfSdzO9bBazhpOpVSoMmyFQLx1Y__EWe_8UMpv97-zWsFhQBzAxcexJFE0EvPki49GLr98QUdsNjOVSOl32S0p4iE/s1600-h/rawa_handcut0_400x536.jpgHowever dangerous we may suppose the agents of al Qaeda to be, we can hold little doubt that the children trained by this extralegal underground network are as dangerous as the adults whom it has trained.
Al Qaeda's well-described training program is bone-chillingly militant and aggressive, devoid of human compassion, single-mindedly focused on the disruption of civilian life, all-encompassing in its ideological stance, puritanical in its preference for civilian attack versus the attainment of military objectives, and persistent in its impact on its participants. The fundamental lesson imparted by al Qaeda to its trainees is a simple two-element message: “Kill the infidels (meaning anyone, Muslim or otherwise, who does not adhere to their hate-fuelled belief system); and continue on to die a (so-called) martyr's death.”
Despite a smokescreen of intense ideological rhetoric, this organization is best understood by examining its actions rather than by attempting to grasp its ideology. The members of this extra-legal group view the killing and injury of civilians as their overarching mission. Al Qaeda dispatches no emissaries and maintains no embassies. It holds no plan of government or policy of international relations. The organization exists entirely outside the framework which makes it possible for international law to take on the meanings which (within our only partially law-governed international culture) we desire to ascribe to it.
The resources of al Qaeda are devoted entirely to the acquisition of explosives and weaponry and to the conversion and training of agents of destruction based on a rhetoric of hate. Terror is not a means to an end for this organization, but an end in itself. The more innocent civilians (or soldiers) who are killed and injured, and the greater the suffering and loss of their victims, the more glorious al Qaeda's victory.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHVzatqQ2SiSAjV2l8LFeKbRhviQyQUpb5u2zcKrSHo4YLrGgHBVseUc55FKLpgllpw5H5r-vi_XkBDwun7WlVq4Mj476_GPtXMQ6xPh1dgUIDi8fHiZruRiDIOCAdl65vRIBkorU8AwTZ/s1600-h/khadr_omar0715.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHVzatqQ2SiSAjV2l8LFeKbRhviQyQUpb5u2zcKrSHo4YLrGgHBVseUc55FKLpgllpw5H5r-vi_XkBDwun7WlVq4Mj476_GPtXMQ6xPh1dgUIDi8fHiZruRiDIOCAdl65vRIBkorU8AwTZ/s1600-h/khadr_omar0715.jpgAdherents
of al Qaeda also view it as a supreme honour to be killed in carrying out their
mission of death and destruction - and I suspect that this is so because these
individuals hold out no more positive goals for their own lives than for those
whom they intend to deprive of life, liberty, health and safety.It is an unseemly fact that al Qaeda is recruiting adults and children alike with the single plan of injuring and killing their self-defined enemies at home and abroad. This organization has no other program. What we do or do not do will not alter their plan, as it is ideologically driven, and therefore fundamentally independent of the flow of world events.
The question as to how we are to respond to al Qaeda and the Islamic extremism it represents is before us. These current choices are more difficult than the past half century has prepared us for, and are by all means entirely shocking to our sensibilities. Yet we must now begin to formulate our responses to the present extraparadigmatic circumstances. The necessity of doing so will press upon us evermore as time drives us forward.
From our own cultural perspective, Omar Khadr was indeed a child at the time he allegedly murdered one US soldier and injured three additional US soldiers (or fought enthusiastically alongside the person or persons who did so). But he was not a soldier by any definition of the term that I am aware of.
I will leave it to you, the reader, to determine your own response to the following questions:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuXzkL6EcEUvcOH1V810g0Rf4fn05glTWXpwKycTc6H6RUIqgK_h8YvlZ1Tz5pw3LaH6XBw1wIyawPexoXeq3sle472NKprtN7mOAUD6VhX5xMlqQuPQMl_zTrk4zdMHSwTY7QnV3ImIw7/s1600-h/Alleged_Khadr_Waving.png
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuXzkL6EcEUvcOH1V810g0Rf4fn05glTWXpwKycTc6H6RUIqgK_h8YvlZ1Tz5pw3LaH6XBw1wIyawPexoXeq3sle472NKprtN7mOAUD6VhX5xMlqQuPQMl_zTrk4zdMHSwTY7QnV3ImIw7/s1600-h/Alleged_Khadr_Waving.pngWas
Omar Khadr an innocent victim of the terrorists who succored and trained him,
twisting and distorting his thinking during the vulnerable developmental phases
of childhood and adolescence? Was he too young to understand and comprehend the
mission of death into which he had been recruited through the influences of his
father, his other family members, and their associates? Do international legal
standards pertaining to the treatment of child soldiers apply to him for such
reasons, regardless of the status of the organization in which he participated,
perhaps due in some large measure to a presumption of the application of direct
or indirect coercion upon him as a child? Further, and perhaps idealistically, might it in some way be possible to rescue Omar Khadr from his exploitative circumstances and restore him to a peaceful, productive and cooperative way of life - in the same manner that our own lives are productive - whether in Canada or in the Muslim world? Given competing priorities (not the least being the compensation of the multitudes of victims of terror both at home and abroad), is it wise to allocate societal resources to the project of rehabilitating Omar Khadr and those like him? Might there be some higher benefit accruing to us due to the learning about fundamental principles of international human relations which might be gained from such a project?
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-538DD7Y_ExiLR7v_LQjIeQpnamF9m4WFxJ8mtkTCcY3qWzkRMoEJf4o-jXqIEoVUxFmaF8-kIkXA0Nhyphenhyphen7k5KnfcM9pWfR-0smtAUl-dJDwnfPaeRBi4WHrg-4N_vKPfHeFulNJWejaZh/s1600-h/al_qaeda.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-538DD7Y_ExiLR7v_LQjIeQpnamF9m4WFxJ8mtkTCcY3qWzkRMoEJf4o-jXqIEoVUxFmaF8-kIkXA0Nhyphenhyphen7k5KnfcM9pWfR-0smtAUl-dJDwnfPaeRBi4WHrg-4N_vKPfHeFulNJWejaZh/s1600-h/al_qaeda.jpgAlternatively,
was Omar Khadr a committed - perhaps reflexive - child terrorist, fully (or
partially) responsible for sharing and invoking the brutal vision of the
organization (into which he was assimilated essentially from birth) that
recruited, guided and trained him, and to which we can only assume he had sworn
allegiance to the death? Was his conditioning, based on lifelong family
participation and organizational membership, so early and deep that it is
fundamentally irreversible? Were his personal motives and intentions
inseparably allied with those of the adult terrorists with whom he lived,
trained, decreed jihad and battled side-by-side? Was he functioning under the
auspices of an extra-legal terrorist organization that itself makes no
recognition of international law, and expects no such legal status for its
members? Further, does Omar Khadr demonstrate any desire to change and to reconcile himself to peaceful coexistence with the peoples of the west - or even with that great portion of Muslims who do not condone al Qaeda and its methods? Is the cost of rehabilitating terrorists - whether children or otherwise - greater than the resources our society can bring to bear on this problem, given the plethora of unaddressed challenges that already confront us closer to home - or that are more central to the core principles of our society? Finally, is rehabilitation the wrong question - a Quixotic venture that will only lead us astray while we remain susceptible to further attack by those whose only intention is to do us harm?
Proceeding further - stretching beyond these initial questions - was Omar Khadr an innocent child victim and a committed international terrorist, concurrently? Or, yet again, was he - is he now - something other than either of these diverse but inherently constraining portrayals might allow?
I encourage you to exercise your own judgement in answering the above questions.
It is indisputable that the recruitment of children into hostilities by any organization is treated as a war crime under international law, making clear that al Qaeda itself is an international criminal organization, and that their recruitment of Omar Khadr was a criminal act.
Around the world, thousands of children are now being born into the families of individuals who have committed themselves to the totalitarian and genocidal ideologies of various Islamic extremist movements. The children of these persons will surely be raised to give comfort to and to stand beside terrorists if not to practise terrorism themselves. They will do so in the company of their parents, their school teachers, their religious leaders, and many other members of their families and communities.
Conditioning of this type is very difficult to reverse. It raises an entirely different set of questions than does the matter of child soldiers in settings such as Africa, where children recruited into combat are separated from their families and inculcated in ideologies that are incongruent with prior family and community practice.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHkoznisyIc4kvFC7Q9q5_QLNv_fwLd9cjKBdtX5MIg_FZlV9OyKKSwSW6XNhxz5D72bvSMdYy94oAs1Ge8e1_aRANVkRETFlYZ4UZZutPMWHRr5A7kdtwPdh1oZFYppOIWQRPocnBLJnB/s1600-h/Alleged_Khadr_3.png
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHkoznisyIc4kvFC7Q9q5_QLNv_fwLd9cjKBdtX5MIg_FZlV9OyKKSwSW6XNhxz5D72bvSMdYy94oAs1Ge8e1_aRANVkRETFlYZ4UZZutPMWHRr5A7kdtwPdh1oZFYppOIWQRPocnBLJnB/s1600-h/Alleged_Khadr_3.pngOmar
Khadr, during his developing years, was one of this multitude of Islamic
children being raised in extremist environments. As has already occurred in the
case of Omar Khadr, we can expect that we will surely be facing such persons in
future battles for many years to come. That these future combatants will have
been recruited into jihad through their families as children will in most cases
not be a concern to us when we face them in battle, whether as children (from
our point of view) or as adults.I submit, therefore, that the most difficult element for us in the story of Omar Khadr is not that he was imputedly a child soldier, but rather that as an individual born in Canada, his story is more approachable to us than are the stories, for example, of the children of the madrasahs of Waziristan. Our egalitarian instincts drive us to attempt to treat him as we would any other Canadian child. This reflex is less automatic in the case of children born to foreign cultures in foreign lands.
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politics of Waziristan - again for example - are complex, with Islamic
radicalism there driven by the region's conservative native Pashtun tribespeople,
an ascendant Taliban movement, and the influx of al Qaeda and other radical
elements. Click here for analysis
from US News & World Report.)We know little about the children who are being raised into extremist environments across the Islamic world. Yet it is almost certain that we will be engaging such children in battle - whether we desire to or not - while continuing to conduct operations in the region with the intention of stabilizing Afghanistan and bringing to an end its role as an international terrorist haven.
Those who are the children of Islamic extremists now will emerge as adults later, and we will be in no position to make subtle differentiations in response to their targeted attacks on civilians in public places (these organizations certainly draw no distinction between adults and children in such attacks), or their attacks on health workers, aid workers, teachers, elected representatives, other leaders, suspected collaborators - and of course, soldiers - both our own and native Afghani troops.
Taken in context, Omar Khadr stands as a symbol, if you will, of a rising tide of Islamic youth who are being drawn into radical causes, with the full intention on the part of their families that they will do battle with infidels both at home and abroad as participants in a global jihadist movement.
Therefore, I will permit you to refer to Omar Khadr as a child (at the time of his capture) if this is your preference, though I consider this characterization of him questionable in his own cultural context (that is, while we would view him as a child, that was not a matter of concern to his recruiters, including his family members).
Additionally, it is certainly reasonable that you take full consideration of the extent to which Omar Khadr was surely exploited and his life misused by the criminal organization in which he was raised. But understand - Omar Khadr was not a child stolen from his family and forced into battle. He was raised at the outset to do exactly what he was engaged in doing when American troops encountered him and his comrades in arms on that fateful day in July 2002, one of the American soldiers giving his life in this confrontation (whatever direct or indirect role that Khadr played in his demise).
Omar Khadr's family were brazen enough to groom their son for his well-documented position in the international jihadist movement (in which he was apparently already fully active at the time of his capture), while simultaneously taking advantage of the full benefits of their Canadian citizenship. These benefits were accorded to Omar Khadr and his family while they were fully occupied with a leadership role in a movement intended to subvert Canada and the nations of the West.
Call Omar Khadr a child, call him exploited, call him a victim - if this is what you believe - but please, don't refer to Omar Khadr as a child soldier. This is where I draw the line. That he was not. Neither in the contexts of historical precedent nor international law.
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May 2008: The trial judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, has indeed just ruled that this young
man is not a child soldier. While this ruling has aroused
controversy, I believe the judge is quite right in reaching this finding on
this particular question of law and procedure. Click here for the Reuters
story on Yahoo!, or here for the National Post version of the
story.8 May 2008: Due to frequent views of this post, I have substantially edited the text (above) in order to clarify the specific ethical questions I am attempting to raise. I wish to distinguish the question of Omar Khadr's presumed mistreatment as a child by his family and by al Qaeda, the organization to which they adhere, from the narrower but also important question of Omar Khadr's right to be treated as a child soldier under international law.
In brief, I see no easy answers to the question of his status as a child accused of assault, murder and perhaps other crimes before the courts. Certainly, the applicable evidence as to what he did or did not do should be fully weighed in a court of justice. That he was actively engaged in both the practice and support of terrorism does not appear to be in question, though there are obvious nuances to be considered, due to the focus of his activity in the Afghan context. Perhaps Omar Khadr has been wrongfully accused of the particular offenses with which he is presently charged. In this case, it is the task of the court to determine if this is or is not so.
What troubles me is the notion that an active and committed member of a terrorist organization, whether a child or not, has the right under international law to be treated as a child soldier, with the implication that rehabilitation is the primary issue at stake.
That is, the indisputably optimistic presumption of international law is that child soldiers can be rehabilitated. I have no such certainty or confidence regarding children subject to the lifelong indoctrination and training of extralegal and particularly blatantly terrorist organizations whose agents and operatives do not belong to armies consistent with any kind of historical precedent, and who often reside in communities that fully condone or at least openly tolerate their activities.
Am I certain as to whether Omar Khadr, specifically, can or cannot be rehabilitated? I am not. Perhaps he can be and perhaps he cannot be. That will depend upon the particulars of the case and on the particulars of his individual makeup, which are not known to me.
However, I object to the simplistic presumption that rehabilitation is the primary issue in Omar Khadr's case because, within our own cultural context - not his - he is (or was) a child at the time of his alleged offenses.
Further, it troubles me, as is typical in our discourse on current events, that the media focus on the story of the offender - in this case - Omar Khadr - rather than on the stories of the four victims, about whom we are told little, if anything at all, and one of whom, due to the loss of his life, allegedly at this young man's hands, though possibly at the hands of one of Khadr's compatriots, no longer has a story that can be told.
http://www.abqtrib.com/photos/galleries/2007/may/28/memorial-day-2007-remembering-local-heroes/
http://www.abqtrib.com/photos/galleries/2007/may/28/memorial-day-2007-remembering-local-heroes/The
final chapter of the story of Sergeant First Class (SFC)
Christopher James Speer's life - this
chapter both heroic and tragic in its essence - has already been written. While
the stories of the dead can be told and retold by those who remember them, they
are embellishments of the past, and no portion remains for future events. The
door to Sgt. Speer's hopes, dreams, plans and goals remains forever closed. It
is the alleged actions of Omar Khadr (and/or the terrorist operatives with whom
he stood) that have sealed the last chapter of Sgt. Speer's
life, and it is the nature of Omar Khadr's responsibility for this act -
including the question of his direct or indirect involvement - that is now in
question.As a rule, we discuss the rights of the perpetrators of crime more easily than we do the rights of its victims, and this continues to trouble me. This is a problem of our society, not that of the Khadr family. (Islamic societies typically make haste with the prosecution and punishment of offenders, adhering to standards of evidence - and considerations of age - much less circumspect than our own.) The fact that Omar Khadr was a child, and his four alleged victims adults, does not in any manner reassure me that he is entitled to the rights of a child soldier as presently defined under international law, whether his part in causing injury and death to the soldiers was direct or indirect.
Strikingly, not only is it difficult to learn about Omar Khadr's victims through regular media channels, a web search for "omar khadr victim" will return endless entries in which Khadr himself is portrayed as a victim. Information about his victims will not be uncovered by such a straightforward search. (Setting aside the incident presently before the courts, we do not know, for example, how many innocent persons - children included - may have been killed or injured while travelling across the mine fields that Khadr and his colleagues salted along local roads.)
Again, the portrayal of Khadr as a victim may not be entirely wrong, but it is certainly not wholly right, offering further evidence that the dead and injured that Khadr and his associates left behind have virtually no one to speak for them, even among their countrymen, whose rights and safety they fought, died and sustained injury to preserve.
In cases such as that of Omar Khadr, we face far more difficult questions than those pertaining to his status as a so-called child soldier.
In my view, the concept of the "child soldier," and particularly its reflexive misapplication by presumptive defenders of the rights of children in regard to Omar Khadr, is more a distraction than an aid in a case such as this one.
New links - 11 May 2008:
60 Minutes November 2007 video and story here.
Omar Khadr: A Most Peculiar Young Offender - March 22, 2008 Globe & Mail editorial, scribed by Sean Fine. An articulate example of what I would consider to be "old paradigm" logic. I do not pretend to be able to give voice to a new paradigm by which we will be able to formulate a coherent response to the fact that we are presently facing a rising tide of postnational terrorism which in all of its aspects is contrary to the principles of law, justice and due process to which the nation states of our era presume to have advanced, or to the associated and unpalatable fact that terrorists have families within which they raise their own children to be adherents to an agenda of genocide, but I do wish to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the Globe & Mail's seductively passionate editorial in fact entirely skirts the most difficult issues at the cutting edge of the still inchoate post-September 11 paradigm.
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unavailability of an applicable paradigm for understanding our new era has
forced the author of this editorial to depict Khadr not as a child soldier, but
as a "young offender," likening his situation to that faced by youths
who stand before the Canadian criminal justice system under the April 1, 2003
Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act.(I have considered alternative scenarios in which concerned Canadians might have cast Omar Khadr's case. For example, with no greater irony than in Mr. Fine's analysis, Canadians could very sincerely cast the problem as a child protection issue. Within the Canadian context, this would be an entirely defensible presumption. Such a portrayal of young Khadr's dilemma obviously breaks down rapidly when one considers how Canadian social workers might attempt to assure Omar's presumed rights as a Canadian child in the tribal regions of Afghanistan. We would certainly have been reluctant to dispatch our social workers to an al Qaeda lair in the Afghan hinterland in order to secure this particular child's rights under Canadian family law. The obvious implication is that it is difficult if not impossible to conceive how the standards of Canadian law could apply in circumstances such as those of young Omar Khadr, and I believe the same difficulty bears on Mr. Fine's analogy, if that is what it is. To be honest, I have considered many times the potential of exploring this dilemma by writing a stage play - working title, "Protecting Omar" (c) - in which a team of idealistic Canadian social workers is dispatched to Afghanistan to confront Omar's parents about their neglect and mistreatment of him, then to attempt to apprehend Omar and to return him to a "culturally appropriate" Canadian foster home. It might be worth illustrating the maze of dilemmas that such a set of presumptions would create in the context of live theatre.)
As has so far most often been the case with our efforts to define Omar Khadr's status, formulating his story as a Canadian youth criminal justice issue lets slip loose more truth than it is able to capture. The presumptions of the author vaporize rapidly against the harsh backdrop of international jihad within which young Khadr's narrative unfolds.
What I do know is that in an earlier era (when the status, security and hegemony of nation states remained unquestioned), we would have responded differently than we do now to a family in our midst who were raising their children to subvert and disrupt the nation which has given them shelter and sustenance, with the concurrent intention of imposing by force of arms a genocidal religious dictatorship in a foreign land where agents allied with them were being trained at the same time to suppress and brutalize religious moderates in their own society (as well as all local non-adherents of their totalitarian ideology, including Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and others) and simultaneously - and quite expansively - declaring religious war (jihad) against the entire societies of the west.
How we can apply the full set of Canadian legal principles in the cases of persons whose lives are entirely devoted to wholly overthrowing exactly these same principles is a mystery to me, though I agree that there surely must exist some middle ground which must be held while seeking a resolution of this dilemma.
Please permit me, therefore, to state the problem face on.
Somewhere over the intervening half century or more, the concept of treason has evaporated, and with it, the allied notion of sedition. We have no updated set of ideas with which to replace these historic pillars of federal and international law. By as yet unidentified means, we will have to generate a new conceptual framework within which to recapture the sensibilities of an earlier age without altogether sacrificing a century or more of presumptive cultural evolution and psychological insight.
The current situation does not afford us the luxury of unlimited time in determining what this fresh accommodation will be. Whatever "new paradigm" comes to pass will be given its ultimate shape through our practices in such cases as that of Omar Khadr. My overarching concern is that we define the entire range of dilemmas we now face clear-headedly, including far-reaching questions bearing on public protection and safety. We must concomitantly call to mind that our present decisions are forming our future habits of responding, and therefore giving shape to our longer-term strategic response to the unreservedly terrorist and totalitarian tactics of the Islamic extremist movement.
12 May 2008 - Note on prisoner management practices at Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp: In my view, the inmates at Guantanamo, as suspected terrorists, should be considered dangerous prisoners. I am supportive of the use of the death penalty for terrorists without major reservations. However, I oppose the use of torture or prisoner mistreatment for any purposes. Torture is illegal, it is ineffective, and it narrows the distinction between who we are and the people whose practices we oppose.
Regarding the alternative adjudication system at Guantanamo, this is a topic I have not researched, and it is beyond the scope of my knowledge to comment on this matter. It does seem reasonable to me that some sort of alternative adjudication method should be applied in cases of terrorism, given the sensitivity of the information obtained - and the associated life-and-death consequences - in investigations of terrorism.
By analogy, the investigation of terrorism has some parallels to investigations of organized crime, though obviously the stakes are dramatically higher in addressing the challenges posed by terrorism. There are far-reaching concerns bearing on witness protection, the consequences of failure to prosecute and convict, public protection and liability issues, etc.
Is it unreasonable to surmise that those who choose to involve themselves in terrorist activities have already decided to play outside the rules to which the remainder of us have submitted? Are we not discussing logical consequences of blatantly illegal and inarguably antisocial actions on a global scale?
New Link: Jerry Z. Muller: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism, Foreign Affairs. Suggested in comment by "Neo-Jackson." See comments section for this post. By the way, this particular comment is in my view brilliantly insightful, and greatly strengthens the case I have attempted to establish in the present post, albeit tentatively. (And no, Neo-Jackson is not I, posting to myself. This is a real person other than I whose thinking - though more strictly conservative than mine - is in accord with my own on this matter.)
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May 2008 (New and additional links to this story): Today Senator Romeo Dallaire
referred to Omar Khadr as clearly a child soldier, and called for his return to
Canada for rehabilitation and reintegration into Canadian society. I
cannot overstate the degree to which I admire and respect Senator Dallaire for his work in the
area of human rights protection. However, in this case, I clearly differ with
him. Nonetheless, this is a great man with important views to be expressed. You
may read Senator Dallaire's
comments here.Child soldier's rehab offers lessons for Khadr: This optimistic story of the rehabilitation of a child soldier to my mind reveals more the contrasts of Omar Khadr's story with that of a "typical" child soldier who presently lives as a rehabilitated member of Canadian society. Michelle Sheppard composed this story for the Toronto Star.
The Case for Omar Khadr - Liveblogging the Subcommittee on International Human Rights: From my perspective, this story represents mainstream coverage of the Khadr case. The difficult questions are not broached.
Omar Khadr - Coming of Age in a Guantanamo Bay Jail Cell: This 2007 CBC story illuminates important background factors in Khadr's upbringing. The information provided is of great relevance to my core argument (a four-paragraph excerpt follows):
"The complexity of the Khadr case is heightened by his upbringing as the youngest in a family of al-Qaeda sympathizers who considered religious martyrdom, being a suicide-bomber, as a supreme calling. Omar's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was an associate of Osama bin Laden and a reputed financier of al-Qaeda operations. He was killed in October 2003 by Pakistani forces. One of Omar's older brothers, Abdullah Khadr, is in jail in Toronto and is fighting a U.S. extradition request for terrorism-related crimes.
"The Rolling Stone article says Omar's father used to tell his children, 'If you love me, pray that I will get martyred.' He urged his sons to be suicide-bombers, saying it would bring "honour" to the family. He actually warned his son Abdurahman, 'If you ever betray Islam, I will be the one to kill you.'
"The Khadr family moved to Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1988, when Omar was two. Four years later, in 1992, Omar's father Ahmed nearly was killed when he stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan. Ahmed and his family returned to Toronto, but when Ahmed recovered the Khadr family returned to Pakistan and soon found themselves back in Afghanistan where they lived in a large compound with bin Laden.
"The U.S. government says this was about the time Omar and his older brothers Abdullah and Abdurahman attended a military camp that provided instruction on handguns, assault rifles, bomb-making and combat tactics. Omar was 14 on Sept. 11, 2001."
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July 2008: Much new information is now surfacing as Omar Khadr's defenders
mount a case built on the premise that Sgt. Speer was killed with an
American-made hand grenade in a "friendly fire" incident.The new information is summarized in a National Post feature, entitled, "Khadr victim killed by friendly fire: lawyers." Excerpts from this article follow:
"Although al-Qaeda suspects were still alive in the compound, U.S. soldiers entered. 'Based on our interviews,' Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler said, 'it appears that at least two U.S. soldiers threw hand grenades.'
"Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler said none of the interviewed soldiers 'suggested that Speer was hit by friendly fire,' and one, Sgt. Layne Morris, told the National Post this week that he had seen Mr. Khadr, then 15, 'crouched in the rubble waiting for U.S. troops to get close enough so he could take one of them out.'
"Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler, who counters Sgt. Morris had been injured and evacuated from the scene ahead of the final assault, argues that had four, instead of just two, 500-lb. bombs been dropped, and the Mark 19 worked, 'there is a very good chance that the last individuals in the compound, including Omar, would have been killed, and Sgt. Speer [would be] alive today.'
"Mr. Khadr's taped discussion of conditions in the compound ahead of the battle is among a number of scenes that did not make the ten minutes of 'highlights' released early Tuesday by the Canadian lawyers defending Mr. Khadr, who work closely with Lt.-Cmdr. Kuebler.
"Although the lawyers later that day released all seven hours - they show Mr. Khadr being interrogated over four days in February, 2003 - there has been little to no publicity given to scenes Mr. Khadr's prosecutors are more likely to have focused on.
"In one he talks about his brothers receiving six months of training - with the interrogator asking if it was to learn about 'infantry' and 'rifles,' and Mr. Khadr himself citing 'grenades.' Mr. Khadr also says his father put them through it 'for self defence.'"In another scene in which mines are mentioned, Mr. Khadr agrees with the interrogator's assessment that 'the whole purpose ... was to take them apart, to use them as an explosive.'"Mr. Khadr says his father dropped him off at the compound near Khost - and the interrogator notes the multilingual youth had said it was to serve as a translator."The interrogator draws out of Mr. Khadr that Afghans and at least two Arabs were present, and there was talk of attacking the Northern Alliance - the U.S.-allied Afghan group that had opposed Taliban rule in Afghanistan."
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family members speak: Omar Khadr's mother reportedly continues to make aggressively anti-Canadian
statements as Khadr's defenders attempt to portray him as a Canadian
citizen. She has recently stated in a television interview (according to a comment posted at this site)
that she "would never raise a son in Canada, because all Canadian boys are
gay or on drugs." She reportedly added
that she was "proud" to have her son "train in Bin Laden’s
camp."Omar Khadr himself has attributed his presence in the building where the conflict with allied forces occurred to his father's placing him there, allegedly as a translator. He has stated, "What was my mistake? Being in a house where my father put me?"
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Khadr's sister Zaynab Khadr has
taken a high profile in the cases of Omar Khadr and his brother Abdullah Khadr, as well as in other
Canadian terrorism cases, as she has attended the bail and preliminary hearings
for the men and youths arrested
for plotting far-reaching terrorist actions in Canada
in 2006. She maintained that many of the accused were "family
friends." Zaynab Khadr's arranged wedding at an al Qaeda compound was attended by Osama bin Laden. Her husband is an Egyptian terrorist named Khalid Abdullah - a follower of Ayman al-Zawahiri who is now in hiding from authorities following his reported participation in the bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan in 1995.
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many links to the present whereabouts of "multiple al Qaeda veterans" were
obtained following the seizure of Zaynab Khadr's laptop computer in 2005 (upon
her return to Canada at that time). Both Zaynab Khadr and her mother are
prohibited from leaving Canada, not for security reasons, but because they can
no longer be granted passports due to reporting the loss of their passports on an
excessive number of occasions.Other comments from Khadr's mother and sister, as well as further details about the release of his interrogation videos, can be obtained in this July 15, 2008 Global News Network story.
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October 2010: Just to wrap things up, Mr.Khadr has pleaded guilty
today on all counts. According to the Associated Press news story, "The now 24-year-old prisoner, who was seriously wounded when he was seized in a gunbattle in 2002, admitted to throwing a grenade that killed a special forces medic during a fierce raid on an al-Qaida compound. He also pleaded guilty to building and planting roadside bombs and receiving weapons training from al-Qaida. He is the last Western detainee at Guantanamo."Due to many levels of controversy, this verdict will certainly not satisfy all critics. To sum up, Omar Khadr is one of probably hundreds of thousands of young people who have been raised in a family and community setting where extremist/terrorist views are condoned.
While this might sound superficially like the description of a child soldier, it is in fact a description of the most typical of our present and future enemies. He has not been ripped out of a family or community context to practice terror, but raised in a terrorist family, in which the highest ideal is to violate the rights and safety of innocent civilians - that is, you and me - as we are branded as "infidels" by an extremist culture.
Though from our viewpoint Mr. Khadr's life story is tragic, his number is legion. The extremists we will meet on future battlefields - and who will practice terror in our cities and communities - are exactly the same. These are precisely the people whom we will send soldiers to battle in future wars. As a trained mine-builder, Mr. Khadr has already killed and injured those fighting on our behalf.
It is perhaps a paradox of the nature of our own news media (it would be quite different in the Islamic world) that we hear more sympathetic voices raised for Mr. Khadr than for his victims - those who represented our interests and safety abroad, specifically Christopher Speer, whom he murdered, and Layne Morris, who lost his eye in the battle in which Mr. Khadr was ultimately apprehended.
In future, let's hear more of Sgt. Speer and Sgt. Morris, though no less of Mr. Khadr. It is a sad fact of our world that there are legions from whence Mr. Khadr has come. Thus, understanding and treating him better might offer us greater insight into the thousands more arrayed against us who are so much like him.
Fundamentally, there is nothing unique about Omar Khadr or his circumstances, apart from the twist of fate that led to his being raised in Canada. He is one of millions who have been raised in the culture of terror. Though his story is common, perhaps his Canadian citizenship may open doors to increased mutual understanding, whether or not for mutual reconciliation.
I for one would far prefer that we lived in a world where children are not groomed for terrorism by their parents and their teachers, but alas, that is not the world we inhabit! It is tough for him, tough for the many who are like him, and tough for us. But that's the way it is.
(19 November 2012) As time has passed, it has become more important to me that if in some way Mr. Khadr's story can somehow be retold, perhaps that might still offer hope for a broader process of change and understanding across an unimaginably deep cultural abyss. If the fact that he spent many of his formative years in Canada could possibly make a difference, it might still be worthwhile to search for ways to build on that - while never forgetting that we are dealing with a "hard" story about determined and brutal adversaries who wish us no good.
22 November 2010 - (from Wikipedia):
On October
25, 2010, Khadr pled guilty to murder in violation of the laws of war,
attempted murder in violation of the laws of war, conspiracy, two counts of
providing material support for terrorism and spying. [202] [203] Under the plea deal, Khadr would
serve one more year in Guantanamo Bay, and be returned to Canada, but Canadian
authorites denied Khadr would be repatriated as part of any agreement.[204]
This plea deal was negotiated between Lieutenant Colonel Jon S. Jackson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and members of the White House. It is reported the prosecutors objected to the deal but ultimately the Convening Authority agreed with Lieutenant Colonel Jackson's proposal and accepted the deal. The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs said in Parliament during Oral Question period that Canada was not involved in the agreement between Khadr and the US government, but when asked about an exchange of diplomatic notes indicating that Canada is inclined to favourably consider a request from Khadr for a transfer to Canada after one year, he said Canada would implement the agreement.[205] [206]
Reportedly, Khadr will spend the next year in near solitary confinement in the section of Guantanamo reserved for the two prisoners who have been convicted in the Military Commission system, a Taliban cook and an Al Qaeda propagandist.[207]
However, Khadr has also apologized for his actions. This is the behaviour of an adult, not a "child"
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS4Q_pVwid7MAnbVu8o6s_H5h-Bm8P3G7bxXgiUfpGyCGIw9vMt9BvgQqSEy6Fz8orFqy_rIdyBbClQQXAjEjZNxi_GI4441aTFgSH9dIsG0b4hzeZ_QW4BwQaqiB3KeaRqnOxjJYkVexb/s1600/s-OMAR-KHADR-large.jpghttps://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS4Q_pVwid7MAnbVu8o6s_H5h-Bm8P3G7bxXgiUfpGyCGIw9vMt9BvgQqSEy6Fz8orFqy_rIdyBbClQQXAjEjZNxi_GI4441aTFgSH9dIsG0b4hzeZ_QW4BwQaqiB3KeaRqnOxjJYkVexb/s1600/s-OMAR-KHADR-large.jpgAs
reported by the Huffington Post,
Khadr stated, "I'm really, really sorry for the pain I've caused you and
your family," said Khadr, standing in the witness stand. "I wish I
could do something that would take away your pain."
As he spoke, Speer gripped the armrests of her chair and shook her head. After he stepped down, and the jury had left the room, she cried and hugged a victim's representative who has accompanied her to the court sessions....
Khadr, now 24, admitted killing her husband, Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, as part of his plea deal. He also acknowledged placing 10 roadside bombs in Afghanistan and spying on U.S. convoys to assess the best ways to attack them. Prosecutors said Khadr was a terrorist and war criminal – a claim challenged by critics of the tribunals – because he was not a legitimate soldier in the battle.
My take... possibly Khadr's apology was motivated by his (already noted) extensive Al Qaeda training. The Al Qaeda agent is instructed always to decieve the infidel. Then again, perhaps he is also responding as an adult to his present situation.
I remain convinced that Mr. Khadr was never a "child soldier." Note the following:
(Mrs Speer) reminded Khadr, and the military jury considering his sentence, that he had an opportunity to escape the compound with other children and women who were permitted by U.S troops to leave at the start of the battle.
"You had your choice and you stayed," she told him in an hour of often emotional testimony that left some audience members in tears as photos of her dead husband and his two young children were played on a screen in the front of the courtroom.
Khadr bowed his head at the defense table and did not look up as the widow spoke to him. Later, he apologized to her in an unsworn statement, a maneuver that allowed him to address the court without having to face questions from the prosecution yet still make his most extensive public comments since his capture (as described above).
Omar Khadr - not a child soldier.
Omar Khadr - now a responsible adult?
Possibly yes. His public statements inspire confidence that he has matured, despite the misleading "child soldier" rhetoric.
Everything we do will make more sense from here on out if we treat Mr. Khadr as a responsible individual - from start to finish.
From my ethical perspective, Mr. Khadr may yet prove himself to be a better man than his apologists and defenders. More credit to him for his ongoing adult behaviour!
This plea deal was negotiated between Lieutenant Colonel Jon S. Jackson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and members of the White House. It is reported the prosecutors objected to the deal but ultimately the Convening Authority agreed with Lieutenant Colonel Jackson's proposal and accepted the deal. The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs said in Parliament during Oral Question period that Canada was not involved in the agreement between Khadr and the US government, but when asked about an exchange of diplomatic notes indicating that Canada is inclined to favourably consider a request from Khadr for a transfer to Canada after one year, he said Canada would implement the agreement.[205] [206]
Reportedly, Khadr will spend the next year in near solitary confinement in the section of Guantanamo reserved for the two prisoners who have been convicted in the Military Commission system, a Taliban cook and an Al Qaeda propagandist.[207]
However, Khadr has also apologized for his actions. This is the behaviour of an adult, not a "child"
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS4Q_pVwid7MAnbVu8o6s_H5h-Bm8P3G7bxXgiUfpGyCGIw9vMt9BvgQqSEy6Fz8orFqy_rIdyBbClQQXAjEjZNxi_GI4441aTFgSH9dIsG0b4hzeZ_QW4BwQaqiB3KeaRqnOxjJYkVexb/s1600/s-OMAR-KHADR-large.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS4Q_pVwid7MAnbVu8o6s_H5h-Bm8P3G7bxXgiUfpGyCGIw9vMt9BvgQqSEy6Fz8orFqy_rIdyBbClQQXAjEjZNxi_GI4441aTFgSH9dIsG0b4hzeZ_QW4BwQaqiB3KeaRqnOxjJYkVexb/s1600/s-OMAR-KHADR-large.jpgAs
reported by the Huffington Post,
Khadr stated, "I'm really, really sorry for the pain I've caused you and
your family," said Khadr, standing in the witness stand. "I wish I
could do something that would take away your pain."As he spoke, Speer gripped the armrests of her chair and shook her head. After he stepped down, and the jury had left the room, she cried and hugged a victim's representative who has accompanied her to the court sessions....
Khadr, now 24, admitted killing her husband, Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, as part of his plea deal. He also acknowledged placing 10 roadside bombs in Afghanistan and spying on U.S. convoys to assess the best ways to attack them. Prosecutors said Khadr was a terrorist and war criminal – a claim challenged by critics of the tribunals – because he was not a legitimate soldier in the battle.
My take... possibly Khadr's apology was motivated by his (already noted) extensive Al Qaeda training. The Al Qaeda agent is instructed always to decieve the infidel. Then again, perhaps he is also responding as an adult to his present situation.
I remain convinced that Mr. Khadr was never a "child soldier." Note the following:
(Mrs Speer) reminded Khadr, and the military jury considering his sentence, that he had an opportunity to escape the compound with other children and women who were permitted by U.S troops to leave at the start of the battle.
"You had your choice and you stayed," she told him in an hour of often emotional testimony that left some audience members in tears as photos of her dead husband and his two young children were played on a screen in the front of the courtroom.
Khadr bowed his head at the defense table and did not look up as the widow spoke to him. Later, he apologized to her in an unsworn statement, a maneuver that allowed him to address the court without having to face questions from the prosecution yet still make his most extensive public comments since his capture (as described above).
Omar Khadr - not a child soldier.
Omar Khadr - now a responsible adult?
Possibly yes. His public statements inspire confidence that he has matured, despite the misleading "child soldier" rhetoric.
Everything we do will make more sense from here on out if we treat Mr. Khadr as a responsible individual - from start to finish.
From my ethical perspective, Mr. Khadr may yet prove himself to be a better man than his apologists and defenders. More credit to him for his ongoing adult behaviour!
------------------
A U.S. civil court has ordered the family
of Omar Khadr, the Canadian teenager jailed ... jailed at Guantanamo Bay, to pay more than $102-million
to the widow of an ... who was killed in the grenade attack, and her two children
$94.5-million; Layne ... Dennis Edney, an Edmonton lawyer for the Khadr
family but not in this civil ...
------------------
nova0000scotia.blogspot.com/.../hey-world-what-happens-when-their-video.html - Cached
4 Jan 2014 ... May 24, 2014 · via Omar
Khadr Sued For $50 Million By American Soldier, Widow. ... 2 go in2 diseased poor uneducated abused Africa
society… ... If We are Good enough 2 die 4 u and a Free Canada - We are good
.... he's been, he doesn't have any anger,” says Dennis Edney, Khadr's long-time
lawyer.
-----------------
July 19, 2008
Khadr video flops
No sympathy gained for young combatant
By MICHAEL COREN
fctAdTag("bigbox",MyGenericTagVar,1);
I have to be blunt. I'm disappointed. Perhaps the sequel will be superior and I suppose we have to be generous to a fairly inexperienced director and cast, but I thought the Omar Khadr video would be better than it turned out to be. A little like the latter Star Wars -- unfulfilled promise.
Actually the whole thing backfired, in that it was supposed to break our hearts and make us angry at the awful Americans who dared to keep a sort of Canadian in prison on suspicion of terrorism and of throwing a hand grenade that killed one of their medics.
Problem is, it showed a well-fed, well-nourished, obviously defiant and healthy young man blubbing and moaning and claiming, rather absurdly, that he has no feet or eyes.
"You do have feet" replied a tolerant Canadian agent, "they're on the end of your legs."
The only valid criticism of the United States is that this young man should have faced a trial by now. If, however, he had been in prison just a few miles away from Guantanamo on Cuba he would have been beaten to death in one of Castro's death camps. If he had been captured by friends of his family in Afghanistan or Iraq he likely would have been raped, tortured and then slowly decapitated. Irony's a funny old thing.
If there has been any abuse over the years it is clearly at the hands of Khadr's own kin. As the highly respected clinical psychologist Dr. Marty McKay told the Children's Aid Society back in 2004 when Omar's mother, Maha Elsamnah Khadr, came to Canada, "I am sure that you would agree that counselling one's child to become suicidal or homicidal constitutes emotional child abuse, leading to physical abuse when the child acts upon these feelings."
And this is precisely what the good woman has done, often and in public.
ADDICTS AND GAYS
She has also, of course, loudly expressed her hatred for western culture and condemned Canada as a vile place where all children are drug addicts or homosexuals. She said she did not want such a fate for Omar or for her other son Karim, who suffered spinal damage after a firefight with the Pakistani soldiers who killed her terrorist husband.
The man may have suffered a different fate if the invincibly naive Jean Chretien had not, in 1995, personally pleaded with the late Benazir Bhutto, then Pakistani prime minister, to release Ahmed Khadr from prison and allow him to come to Canada. He didn't stay long -- there was work to be done with international Islamic murder gangs.
In 2004 the Khadr matriarch was brought back to Canada even though the family had lost several Canadian passports. Hey, it happens. They were flown business class from Pakistan. Hey, it happens. On public money. Hey, it happens.
Well, it happens to some people. Especially if they have friends within special interest groups and can convince credulous liberals who hate America more than they love truth and justice.
Omar Khadr is a tenuous Canadian at best, unlike most newcomers to the country who love it with pride and passion. If we feel sorry for him and his family, consider the family of the young medic smashed beyond recognition that horrible day six years ago. Good Lord, most people don't even know his name. But they know the name of Omar Khadr.
Khadr video flops
No sympathy gained for young combatant
By MICHAEL COREN
fctAdTag("bigbox",MyGenericTagVar,1);
I have to be blunt. I'm disappointed. Perhaps the sequel will be superior and I suppose we have to be generous to a fairly inexperienced director and cast, but I thought the Omar Khadr video would be better than it turned out to be. A little like the latter Star Wars -- unfulfilled promise.
Actually the whole thing backfired, in that it was supposed to break our hearts and make us angry at the awful Americans who dared to keep a sort of Canadian in prison on suspicion of terrorism and of throwing a hand grenade that killed one of their medics.
Problem is, it showed a well-fed, well-nourished, obviously defiant and healthy young man blubbing and moaning and claiming, rather absurdly, that he has no feet or eyes.
"You do have feet" replied a tolerant Canadian agent, "they're on the end of your legs."
The only valid criticism of the United States is that this young man should have faced a trial by now. If, however, he had been in prison just a few miles away from Guantanamo on Cuba he would have been beaten to death in one of Castro's death camps. If he had been captured by friends of his family in Afghanistan or Iraq he likely would have been raped, tortured and then slowly decapitated. Irony's a funny old thing.
If there has been any abuse over the years it is clearly at the hands of Khadr's own kin. As the highly respected clinical psychologist Dr. Marty McKay told the Children's Aid Society back in 2004 when Omar's mother, Maha Elsamnah Khadr, came to Canada, "I am sure that you would agree that counselling one's child to become suicidal or homicidal constitutes emotional child abuse, leading to physical abuse when the child acts upon these feelings."
And this is precisely what the good woman has done, often and in public.
ADDICTS AND GAYS
She has also, of course, loudly expressed her hatred for western culture and condemned Canada as a vile place where all children are drug addicts or homosexuals. She said she did not want such a fate for Omar or for her other son Karim, who suffered spinal damage after a firefight with the Pakistani soldiers who killed her terrorist husband.
The man may have suffered a different fate if the invincibly naive Jean Chretien had not, in 1995, personally pleaded with the late Benazir Bhutto, then Pakistani prime minister, to release Ahmed Khadr from prison and allow him to come to Canada. He didn't stay long -- there was work to be done with international Islamic murder gangs.
In 2004 the Khadr matriarch was brought back to Canada even though the family had lost several Canadian passports. Hey, it happens. They were flown business class from Pakistan. Hey, it happens. On public money. Hey, it happens.
Well, it happens to some people. Especially if they have friends within special interest groups and can convince credulous liberals who hate America more than they love truth and justice.
Omar Khadr is a tenuous Canadian at best, unlike most newcomers to the country who love it with pride and passion. If we feel sorry for him and his family, consider the family of the young medic smashed beyond recognition that horrible day six years ago. Good Lord, most people don't even know his name. But they know the name of Omar Khadr.
-------------------
1. TRAITORS AMONG US
The Traitor.
"A nation can survive its
fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An
enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner
openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly
whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government
itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to
his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the
baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation,
he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the
city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer
is less to fear."
-Marcus Tillius Cicero, 106 BC
- 43 BC
-Roman, Orator, Philosopher,
Statesman
Hello there……its me
again……..Don Laird……..
As I grow older there is less
and less in this life that surprises me. Many of the questions I had as a child
have been answered. I have come to understand, not completely, the human
condition. Of the many facets of the human condition I now know the many faces
of treason, sedition and treachery. I now know the currency of cowards and
collaborators.
I watch hundreds of videos
like the videos above. I watch the bullets stir the cranial contents of the
terrified and the innocent. I watch as fevered lips whisper words of a
desperate last moment prayer to the God they are soon to meet. I watch as the
throats are cut and the arterial spray glistens in the sunlight. I watch the
terrified eyes glaze over, the head comes away from the body of the innocent
victim. I watch as tears of shame and anguish run rivers down bruised cheeks,
as nervous fingers fumble with handkerchiefs whilst those moments of agony,
flooding back, tormenting, torrential, are relived once again, once again as
the raped and the savaged tell their horrific stories of utter degradation,
humiliation and loss. I listen to the cries of orphans and widows as they beg
us, beseech us not to turn away, not to abandon them, and I am moved. As my
eyes fill with their anguish and my ears with their cries I can almost smell
the blood, I nearly wretch and choke at the stench of the rotting flesh; I am
with them. Yet I am impotent in the face of their need, in the face of their
loss; my hypocrisy, my betrayal, my cowardice know no bounds. I stand on the
edge of an abyss of madness, of blackest despair, my soul slips slowly away and
all I have left is my pen and my paper.
But as salt into the wound,
there rises above the cries of the dead and dying, above the cries of the battered
and the bruised, another voice.
In spite of all that truth,
all that agony, the voices of the apologists for the crimes of Muslims, the
sneering voices of Leftist/Liberal apologists for Muslim crimes against
humanity, seek to drown out the agony of the widows and the orphans, seek to
excuse, seek to mitigate, seek to smear the excrement of the self-loathing
politically correct on the memory of the butchered, seek to turn our gaze away
from those mass graves, seek to whitewash 1400 years of Muslim war and
terrorism, seek to turn our attention away from those same Muslim hyenas that
now walk among us here in North America.
I now know the many faces of
the treasonous, the seditious and the treacherous, they are legion, they move
among us.
You see, the IS, the Islamic
State is nothing new. The IS is in fact simply acting in accordance with the
commandments of the Koran and the supporting Islamic jurisprudential text, the
Sira and the Hadith.
The IS is simply providing us
with a modern day manifestation of the 7th century when the mass murdering,
child molesting, warmongering lunatic named Muhammad started claiming he was
getting special messages from God, when he started spreading his charming brand
of poisonous lunacy, spewing it into any ear that would listen and cutting the
heads off of those who knew him for the impotent, cowardly psychopath he was.
In the end, the IS, the
Muslim, can no more be blamed for their acts of murder and madness than one can
beat a pig for rolling in mud or a dog for howling at the moon; its in their
nature to maim, to murder, to rape, to loot, to kill and to conquer, its in
their nature, its who they are, its what defines them and its what they are
commanded to do by the Koran.
But the crime, the greatest
crimes of all are the crimes of endorsement, the crimes of avocation, the
crimes of mitigation, the crimes of wilful blindness, the crimes of ignorance,
all of these crimes, the crimes of the Leftist/Liberal, the crimes of the
sentimental dog-catchers, these are the crimes that wound the deepest, they are
the most grievous of crimes.
From our Leftist/Liberals in
the media, in our House of Commons, in our courts, in our bureaucracy, in our
intelligence infrastructure, in our law enforcement agencies, in the Legal
Industry, in our schools, all of these, treasonous and seditious handmaidens
each and every one to the Muslim as it seeks, with a murderous Grand Jihad, to
destroy "the miserable house of the West from within and by its own
hand".
I wrote a small rambling essay
called "Of Muslims, Dog-Catchers, Patriots and Vigilantes". Below is
a quote from that little ramble that deals with the treasonous, sentimental
dog-catching litigators, that provide such passionate defence and avocation of
murderers and terrorists and seek to loose among the innocent, the human
equivalent of rabid dogs; the Muslim and its Islam.
As an example consider the
following:
"In a small town the
local dog-catcher has rounded up a half a dozen mutts. Dogs with distemper,
rabies and dispositions that have resulted in several attacks on local
denizens. Sitting in his chair one evening he ponders the fate of the dogs;
warm and fuzzy little creatures with begging eyes and whimpering that tugs at
his heart strings. Overwhelmed with sentimentality, he swings open the doors to
the cages whereupon the dogs immediately run amok in the town, badly mauling
several children and killing several senior citizens.
What do you think would happen
to the dog-catcher after the townsfolk had regained their senses? I can
absolutely guarantee you that, if he survived the enthusiastic beatings he
would get from the townsfolk, he would suffer a withering course of criminal
indictment, incarceration upon conviction and a blizzard of civil actions that
would leave him penniless.
So then, consider the actions
of dog-catchers like Romeo Dallaire, John Norris, Dennis Edney, Brydie Bethell
and Nathan Whitling, as their vigorous defence of an unrepentant terrorist,
Omar Khadr, has now returned him to Canada and will, possibly within months,
see his 40 year sentence for murder and terrorism eviscerated and him walking
the streets of Toronto on paths of rose petals strewn by thousands of his
admirers, strewn by thousands of "good Muslims".
The horror of the
hypothetical-
In the days that follow the
"liberation celebrations", little Omar Khadr's disciples, ever the
busy little bees, are working overtime to bring to the attention of the filthy
infidels, the error of their ways. Christ and Christmas reviled by Khadr's
Kid's, they select an appropriate time of the year. The bomb detonates at
Toronto's Royal Winter Fair, the explosion turns the surrounding area into a
maelstrom of razor sharp glass and shrapnel, shredding flesh to bone. Those
close to the center of the blast evaporate, others turn to jelly. Blood runs
rivers and the screams of the dying, piercing the air, shred the sanity of the
survivors. The will of Allah and Muhammad is done and Omar Khadr, flanked by
his poisonous mother and siblings, turns to Mecca, kneels and gives thanks to
his God.
The city is terrified, the
country is terrified, and the long black line of cars bears the victims to
their final reward. Another page in the book of Western understanding of Islam
now written.
Now comes the ability to hold
those responsible for the loosing of hyenas' amongst the sheep to account.
Unfortunately, the penalties levied against the dog-catcher are not available
as mechanisms of redress and accountability in dealing with those whose
litigious contortions set loose madmen.
The Mainstream Media grinds
into action its game of "Distract and Dissuade".
Politicians will rise in
legislatures and Parliament and, with hand on heart, gripping the latest poll
numbers, whilst dabbing crocodile tears, give fiery speeches and
eulogies….merely self serving exercises in hypocrisy.
In the darkness of living
rooms, men sit and, fingering the photographs of dead wives and children, look,
through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes, at those faces they will never
see again. They hear the echoes of the voices of those they will never speak to
again. And, awash in grief and comfortless agony, they know who is responsible
for their loss and the darkness that surrounds them.
In the light of this, I ask
you this question; for right or wrong and knowing it is a criminal act, would
not the men, now widowed and having buried their loved ones, abandoned by the
politicians elected to protect them, abandoned by the duplicitous and deceitful
media, abandoned by the courts, abandoned by spineless agencies of law
enforcement, abandoned by the avenues of redress held out to them as their only
alternative, would not they be justified in hunting down the self righteous dog
catchers and killing them?
Right or wrong, the actions of
the men would be condemned as criminal but understood as infinitely and
righteously just by millions of Canadians.
Excerpt from -"Of
Muslims, Dog Catchers, Patriots and Vigilantes"
Moving on………
When the bomb goes off in
Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto killing hundreds, a bomb set by the Muslim.
When a dozen women and children are hacked to death at a coffee shop by the
Muslim. When a shopping mall is littered with the dead, mowed down in the
fashion of the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. When hundreds of terrified shoppers in
the West Edmonton Mall are herded into the skating rink cum killing field and
butchered. When a Canadian or American soldier is beheaded on one of our
streets. When our daughters, our wives, our sisters, our mothers are turned
into whores for legions of grunting, drooling Muslim males. Let us remember.
Let us remember the faces.
Let us remember the names.
Let us remember the smug faces
of John Norris and Brydie Bethell, lawyers known for defending the butcher of a
feeble grandmother, known for defending a vicious little convicted murderer and
terrorist, Omar Khadr.
Let us remember the face of
the arrogant Nathan Whitling, fresh from turning loose Alberta's Travis Vader
on a disclosure technicality, Travis Vader, the alleged butcher of an Alberta
grandmother and grandfather, Mr and Mrs McCann. The same Nathan Whitling who
fawned (s) over the murdering terrorist, Omar Khadr and his family of Islamic
vipers.
Let us remember the face of
the immigrant litigator Dennis Edney, a lawyer who licked (s) the boots of Omar
Khadr and the entirety of the Khadr family, a family of terrorists. A lawyer
who attended and attends meetings with Muslims directly connected to terrorist
groups. A lawyer who stands in front of those same Muslims and weeps rivers.
The same lawyer who weeps not for one single victim of the horrors of 9-11, but
who weeps rivers for a murdering terrorist Omar Khadr and who seeks to set the
same free among unsuspecting Canadians.
Let us remember the face of
lawyer John Phillips, of the law firm Phillips/Gill. Let us remember this
litigating parasite who has launched a multi-million dollar lawsuit against
Canadians on behalf of the terrorist Omar Khadr and his family.
Let us remember the canons of
law enforcement whose cowardice, corruption, politically correct bureaucracy
and a mockery of leadership, has left their charges, young police officers culturally
self-loathing, historically illiterate, terrified of reality and with their
throats laid bare to razor sharp knives of Muslim orthodoxy.
Let us remember the faces of
Barack Obama, of Justin Trudeau, of Olivia Chow, of Libby Davies, of Eric
Holder, of Joe Biden and of all the others who sing the praises of the Muslim
and who, at the direction of treasonous Imams and Mullahs, brick by brick
dismantle our nations, who gleefully emasculate our nations defences, who smear
handfuls of the poisonous rhetorical excrement of a 7th century lunatic on
everything we hold dear, who lay waste to all our sacred traditions and ideals
and all to assuage the bruised egos of mass murdering, pedophile psychopaths
and lunatics.
Let us remember the faces of
Peter Jennings, of Peter Mansbridge, of Wendy Mesley, of Kevin Newman, of
Christiane Amanpour, of Hubert Lacroix, of Dawna Friesen and the blood
spattered faces of all the other Leftist/Liberal media talking heads who have
for decades, holding the licence of credibility and the privilege of celebrity,
from the bully-pulpit of mass media, lied, whitewashed, obfuscated, excused,
mitigated, propagandized, ignored and in many cases, whole heartedly endorsed,
the murderous actions of the Muslim and the poison of the Koran.
Let us remember them, each and
every one and all of their crimes with clarity and particularity.
In the end, we cannot blame
the Muslim and their Leftist/Liberal handmaidens for their crimes, crimes of
commission and crimes of omission. Its what they are commanded to do, its what
defines them, its who they are, to the very core.
The blame for the madness of
the Muslim and its Islam as it seeks to destroy all we have built, as it seeks
to murder us, as it seeks to make us slaves, rest squarely on our shoulders, it
always has.
So then, let us acquit
ourselves of the burden of citizenship in a democracy, of citizenship in a
republic. Let us remove from our midst those who seek our destruction.
So then, let us deal with the
Muslim and its Islam, but let us never forget the faces of treason, let us
never forget the faces of the traitors.
Food for thought, catalyst for
action.
Regards, Don Laird
Dogtown Bastard
Alberta, Canada
--------------
Omar Khadr refuses to renounce
doctrine of Armed Jihad
by Tarek S. Fatah • September
24, 2013 • 2 Comments
Omar Khadr dressed to the nines in a
court dock
October 2, 2102
Tarek
Fatah
The Toronto Sun
The Toronto Sun
Omar
Khadr is on record calling a black female soldier guarding his cellblock a
“slave” and a “whore.” Yet today, feminists and human rights groups are
rallying around him as if he was the reincarnation of Dr. King himself.
Consider
how we would have reacted, if, during the Korean War, a fellow Canadian who not
only worked for the North, but, disguised in civilian attire, blew up an
unarmed medic sent to aid him.
Suffice
to say, irrespective of our political leanings, our reactions would have been
outrage and disgust.
But
Canada has come a long way since the days when clarity was common; when discerning
between good and evil was not that difficult; when traitors proud of their
hatred for our western civilization would be shunned, not treated as
celebrities.
Had
Khadr repented his past and denounced the doctrine of armed jihad of his
father, I would have championed his early release. I did it in 2007, but
discovered to my shock Khadr’s refusal to renounce armed jihad.
Today,
Canada’s chattering classes are treating Khadr, an anti-black racist, a
self-confessed murderer, and an unrepentant terrorist, as a celebrity.
In the
newsrooms of liberal newspapers, you can sense the glee.
After
all, it was they who carefully crafted an image of Khadr as a puppy-faced,
innocent teen caught up in the mess of war.
The
incessant drumbeat of “child soldier” to describe a willing terrorist, is a lie
that cannot withstand scrutiny.
However,
in the circus of multiculturalism, we have paid for the sight of an exotic
spectacle, not the facts.
These
days, who cares if the clown entertaining us is a murderer in disguise?
Khadr
was nearly 16 when he was captured in Afghanistan after a shootout, where, he
confesses, he killed an unarmed medic sent to save him.
According
to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 38, (1989), “State
parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not
attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.” In
addition, article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court (ICC) says, “Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of
15 years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively
in hostilities” is a war crime.
So
Khadr did not fit the definition of a child soldier when he committed his
crime.
And
today, he is an adult, who, if he so desires, can even now denounce al-Qaida,
the Taliban and the jihadi ideology. But he chooses not to do so.
Canadians
sympathetic to Khadr should realize the doctrine of Islamic jihad against the
infidel has no problem with teenage soldiers doing battle, or even leading
armies. (Many suicide bombers are teenagers.) After all, it was a teenage
general, Bin Qasim, who invaded India in the year 711 and is today the hero of
most Muslims in India and Pakistan.
Prophet
Muhammad himself appointed a teenager, Osama Bin Zayd, to head an army against
the Byzantines in Syria.
After
the Prophet’s death, Arabs refused to follow Osama, not because he was a
teenager, but because he was a black African and a former slave.
Now we
know the tradition from which Khadr belched out his racist slurs. It’s the
jihadi tradition.
Be Sociable, Share!
-------------
Omar
Khadr threatens his guards with vengeance
Posted by Ezra Levant on August 9, 2010
On Monday,
the judge hearing Omar Khadr’s murder trial in Guantanamo Bay ruled that Khadr’s
taped confessions can be admitted at trial.
Canada’s
little terrorist is as good as done.
But what
remains to be seen is whether the liberal media will save the myth of Omar
Khadr — the myth they have painstakingly built in collusion with Khadr’s
lawyers.
I predict
that the Khadr in the two pictures below, photographed in front of an AK-47,
and then assembling IEDs to use against NATO troops in Afghanistan, will be
locked up for a very long time:
PHOTOS:
ut this
Khadr, the mythical Khadr created by the CBC and the Toronto Star and the Globe
and Mail, the Khadr from a junior high school photo provided to the media by
his mother, will live on for a long time:
omar-khadr.jpg
If you
want more Khadr footage as he really was, I encourage you to watch the 60
MInutes story on him, here.
What’s
going on here? Why is the media white-washing Khadr’s evil? For an explanation,
let me excerpt from a speech that the great Richard Fadden, the head of CSIS,
gave last fall:
So why then, I ask, are those accused of
terrorist offences often portrayed in media as quasi-folk heroes, despite the
harsh statements of numerous judges? Why are they always photographed with
their children, given tender-hearted profiles, and more or less taken at their
word when they accuse CSIS or other government agencies of abusing them? It
sometimes seems that to be accused of having terrorist connections in Canada
has become a status symbol, a badge of courage in the struggle against the real
enemy, which would appear to be, at least sometimes, the government. To some
members of civil society, there is a certain romance to this. This loose
partnership of single-issue NGOs, advocacy journalists and lawyers has
succeeded, to a certain extent, in forging a positive public image for anyone accused
of terrorist links or charges.
Bang on,
just like his comments about Chinese spies in Canada.
No wonder
the media-lawyer complex hates Fadden.
Today the
Guantanamo court saw a video of Khadr threatening his guards with Allah’s
vengeance — not quite how the media have portrayed him.
Here’s how
I put it in my latest column in the Sun newspapers:
Don’t cry for Khadr
Canadian terror suspect Omar Khadr has it
tough in Guantanamo Bay — just ask him, and the chorus of left-wing journalists
and lawyers whose love for him makes Justin Bieber’s groupies look restrained.
Khadr says he has been tortured at
Guantanamo Bay. But Monday, prosecutors in his murder trial showed a video of
some of that “torture”: American guards trying to weigh Khadr when he first
arrived there, as per Red Cross regulations. He wiggled and wriggled, first
claiming he had to go to the potty, and then just crying.
But then Khadr regained his composure — and
showed his true nature. “Sooner or later, God will take our revenge,” he said
to the guards.
And what would Allah do to the guards, in
vengeance for weighing him, as any prisoner in Canada is weighed? He will
“torture you,” said Khadr, presumably meaning something more than just being
weighed.
My, my. Invoking God and violence — sounds
like a jihadi to me. But don’t let facts like that interfere with the liberal
fiction of Khadr being a naive kid, just running with the wrong crowd, an
innocent lamb.
Oh, the indignity of being weighed. The average
Guantanamo detainee puts on 20 pounds during his stay at Guantanamo Bay, a
place where more money is spent on Muslim halal food for prisoners than for the
guards there. Fitting into his old pants is just torture!
It’s not just the special Muslim food; the
Muslim call to prayer sounds five times a day at Guantanamo Bay, and arrows
point to Mecca to show prisoners where to pray. Khadr knows better: He aims his
prayers to Canada’s liberal press.
Khadr and his fellow inmates can work off
all those large lunches if they like, playing basketball, volleyball and
soccer. The Pentagon even provides high-top sneakers. There’s board games in
the lounge, and plenty of TV time, including Arabic language TV and a library
stocked with books in 13 languages. And as the Sun’s David Akin reported
exclusively last month, Khadr has access to Nintendo, and regular computers,
too.
And then there are the care packages sent
to Khadr by Canada’s own Department of Foreign Affairs. To be clear: Canadian
taxpayers send regular gifts to Khadr to make his stay even more comfortable.
It’s not the misogynist paradise of 72
virgins Khadr once said motivated him in his jihad. But there are more than a
few similarities with the other resorts on Cuba.
Monday, the judge decided to hear about the
reality of Khadr, not just the carefully constructed fiction his lawyers have
offered up to an unquestioning media. He ruled tapes of Khadr’s confessions
will be admitted at trial.
Question: Do you think the media will
continue to use the junior high-school yearbook photo of Khadr, taken before he
even went to Afghanistan and circulated to the press by Khadr’s own mother as
an act of propaganda?
Or do you think maybe — just maybe — we’ll
see footage of the violent, threatening Khadr?
Oh, and one last thing. Do you care that
the very first Canadian killed in hostile action in Afghanistan was killed by
an IED assembled by a terrorist who was under 18, just like Khadr was?
--------
LETTER OF THE PEOPLE
Deport terrorists
The Oct. 3 letter by Ron O’Reilly, titled “Stand up for
values,” expresses the opinion of thousands of Canadians when it comes to
harbouring terrorists and their families. Our bleeding-heart politicians are
only interested in votes from other bleeding-hearts who favour terrorists
becoming Canadians.
I agree with him that Omar Khadr and his family should be
deported.
All terrorists who call Canada home should be deported. But
this will not happen, as 99 per cent of politicians don’t care about ordinary,
law-abiding Canadians’ concerns when dealing with terrorists.
Edward Watt, Halifax
-----------------------
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
Two sides
to story
There are
many reasons why people have grave issues with the policies of the United
States. But when people use their hatred of all things American to persuade
themselves to take positions that can be viewed as a total distortion of
reality, then that hatred is bordering on being pathological.
Such is
the case of the book Omar Khadr: Oh Canada, edited by Janice Williamson and
reviewed by Paul W. Bennett in the July 15 NovaScotian. Their attempt to
rehabilitate Mr. Khadr’s track record is unjust.
As a
matter of concern, the name of the person Mr. Khadr killed is Christopher
Speer. He was a 28-year-old married man with two children, three-year-old Taryn
and Tanner, aged nine months. This information, putting a human touch to the
person Mr. Khadr killed, was not mentioned in Mr. Bennett’s review.
Ezra
Levant also wrote a book about Omar Khadr. It is titled The Enemy Within. Terry
Glavin reviewed both books in the Globe and Mail on July 6. He suggested that
people should either read both books, or neither.
Jack MacLellan,
Sydney
---------------
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
Shame
on Canada
It will be
interesting to learn whether our government chooses to believe all the data and
interrogation films offered by the U.S. or whether a non-political, non-U.S. investigative journalist
report might be more credible.
From a
purely practical standpoint, in a war zone firefight, opponents are supposed to
kill each other. There is no indication U.S. troops entered the compound with
the expectation that occupants had surrendered. While the death of Sgt.
Christopher Speer is regrettable, there is no reason to believe that his death
was anything other than KIA.
As a
prisoner of war, a Canadian citizen held in a U.S. military prison should
reasonably expect to receive treatment in accordance with the Geneva
Convention.
Shame on
Canada for not intervening earlier and insisting that this “child soldier”
receive proper and humane medical treatment, proper interrogation methods and
Canadian military justice.
Walter
Grant, Halifax
-------------
VOICE OF
THE PEOPLE
Stand
up for values
I would be
very curious to know who is paying all these high-priced lawyers who are
involved with bringing Omar Khadr home. I suspect it will end up being you and
me. If so, I object to having my tax dollars going towards ANY terrorist.
Also, why
haven’t his mother and sister been deported back to wherever they came from?
Once they start making statements in support of their terrorist son and
brother, they no longer have the right to Canadian citizenship. The whole
family should be deported!
We are
much too kind in Canada when it comes to immigrants to our country. It is time
we stood up for our values as a society.
Ron
O’Reilly, Dartmouth
--------------------
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
Give
Khadr a chance
On June 7,
there were two letters describing Omar Khadr as an unrepentant terrorist who
has engaged in treasonous behaviour and who, given an opportunity, would do it
again. The writers’ solution is life imprisonment. They’d also probably agree
with Public Security Minister Vic Toews’ decision to restrict any outside
contact.
These
writers appear to have no problem with the fact that Omar Khadr was just 15
years old when he was captured, or that he had been subjected to significant
indoctrination prior to this.
There were
also no concerns expressed regarding Khadr’s treatment at Guantanamo or the
significant issues surrounding the military tribunal process. In fact, Khadr’s
military lawyer resigned in 2008 because this process was ethically
questionable and it would preclude a fair trial.
Finally,
one writer cited Dr. Michael Welner’s psychiatric assessment, which suggested
that Kahdr was too “radicalized” to be rehabilitated. His conclusion was
accepted as fact despite other contradictory opinions and observations. Dr.
Arlette Zinck, who has worked with Khadr at Guantanamo, presented an opposing
view in a 2012 Toronto Star article.
So, we
have two very different pictures. Sen. Romeo Dallaire continues to advocate for
Khadr because, from his perspective, he was indeed a child soldier. What
difference would it have made if this had been the view? Omar Khadr deserves a
chance.
Keith
Lanthier, Lunenburg
------------------
Yet another one... killing our Nato troops,..... Sweet Jesus
Mother Mary and joseph
Canadian due in court over Iraq killings of 5 US soldiers
Channel News Asia Saturday 24th January, 2015
NEW YORK: A Canadian man will go before a New York court on
Saturday (Jan 24) accused of murder and conspiracy over the killing of five US
soldiers in Iraq, American prosecutors said.Faruq Khalil Muhammad Isa, 36,
allegedly helped to orchestrate a truck bombing carried out by a Tunisian
militant on a US base in Mosul, northern Iraq, on Apr 10, 2009 that killed the
five American soldiers.His network was also allegedly responsible for another
suicide attack carried out by Tunisians on an Iraqi police station on Mar 31,
2009 that killed at least seven Iraqis."We will continue to use every
available means to bring to justice those who are responsible for the deaths of
American servicemen and women who paid the ultimate price in their defence of
this nation," said Loretta Lynch, US attorney for the eastern district of
New York.Isa, who was arrested in Canada on Monday and extradited to New York,
will appear in a US federal court in Brooklyn.He is charged with five counts of
murder for each soldier, conspiracy to murder American citizens and with
providing material support to terrorists. If convicted he could face life in
prison....
-------------
Khadr case:
Timeline of key events
In this photo of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin and
reviewed by a U.S. Department of Defense official, Canadian defendant Omar
Khadr, top left, attends his pretrial hearing in the courthouse for the U.S.
military war crimes commission at the Camp Justice compound on Guantanamo Bay
U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, Monday, Aug. 9, 2010. (AP / Janet Hamlin)
CTVNews.ca Staff
Published Saturday, September 29, 2012 10:13AM EDT
Last Updated Thursday, May 22, 2014 8:57PM EDT
1977: Khadr family emigrates from Egypt, settles in southern
Ontario
1985: Patriarch Ahmen Said Khadr moves to Pakistan at the
height of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, meets Osama bin Laden.
Sept. 19 1986: Omar Khadr is born in Ontario.
1986: The Khadr family moves back to Pakistan, where the Ahmed
Said Khadr works for an organization financed partly by the Canadian
International Development Agency
1992: Ahmed Said Khadr returns to Toronto after his leg is
injured in an explosion
1995: Ahmed Said Khadr is arrested for his alleged role in the
bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. He is later released after Jean
Chretien intervenes on his behalf.
1996: Family returns to Canada, but Ahmed Said Khadr leaves
again for Pakistan, forming his own humanitarian relief group. The family moves
to Jalabad in Taliban-controlled eastern Afghanistan, where they live in Osama
bin Laden’s camp.
1996: Omar and his brothers are taken to meet al Qaeda leaders
for training at the age of 10. The family makes annual trips to Canada to raise
money and collect supplies.
1999: Khadr family moves to Kabul, where Taliban have taken
control after a long civil war.
Sept. 11, 2001: Terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center
and Pentagon.
Nov. 2001: The U.S.-backed Northern Alliance rebels chase the
Taliban out of Kabul. Omar Khadr flees to his father's orphanage in Logar,
Afghanistan.
June 2002: After training on AK-47s, Soviet PKs and
rocket-propelled grenades, Khadr, 15, works as a translator for al Qaeda and
conducts a surveillance mission.
Oct. 2001: Ahmed Said Khadr is named on a list of suspected
terrorists wanted by the FBI.
Injured and Captured
July 2002: According to statements of fact later read at his
trial, Omar Khadr, now 15, threw a Russian-made F1 grenade from behind the wall
of a compound in Afghanistan. The grenade killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class
Christopher Speer.
Omar Khadr is captured by the U.S. military after its forces
bomb the compound. The teen is severely wounded, and as a result, loses sight
in one eye. First detained at Bagram Air Base.
Oct. 2002: At age of 16, Khadr is transferred to Guantanamo
Bay. Later, lawyers will argue that Khadr was not afforded special safeguards
and care, including legal protections appropriate to the age of "child
soldiers."
Oct. 2003: Omar’s father is killed by Pakistani forces.
Feb. 2003: CSIS officials first interrogate the young Khadr.
According to legal documents, he was not provided access to legal counsel until
November 2004.
Nov. 2003: Abdurahman Khadr, Omar Khadr’s younger brother,
returns to Toronto after being released from Guantanamo Bay in July. He tells
media he travelled and co-operated with U.S. intelligence services in the
months between his release and return to Canada.
Legal battles and charges
March 2004: Khadr's grandmother, Fatmah Elsamnah, launches
lawsuit against the Department of Foreign Affairs, alleging Ottawa failed to
protect her grandson's rights as a Canadian. Elsamnah later launches a similar
suit against U.S. authorities.
Sept. 2004: Khadr deemed "enemy combatant” by Combat
Status Review Tribunal.
Aug. 2005: A Federal Court judge says Canadian agencies,
including CSIS, are violating Khadr's Charter rights by turning information
gleaned in interviews over to U.S. investigators.
Nov. 2005: After an Executive Order establishing military
commissions, the U.S. government charged Omar with murder, attempted murder,
conspiracy, and aiding the enemy.
Dec. 2005: Khadr's eldest brother, Abdullah, is arrested in
Toronto for allegedly acting as an al Qaeda go-between and supplying
explosives.
June 2006: The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently invalidated the
military commissions system and those charges were dropped.
Feb. 2007: Omar recharged under the new system established by
the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA).
June 2007: Those new charges dismissed. The Military
Commissions judge determined that the Military Commission did not have
jurisdiction to try Omar as an “unlawful enemy combatant” based on his prior
designation by the Combat Status Review Tribunal as an “enemy combatant.”
July 2007: Military Commission dismisses charges against Khadr
for lack of jurisdiction
Sept. 2007: Court of Military Commissions Review (CMCR)
reverses Military Commission ruling of 29 June 2007.
Oct. 2007: CMCR summarily denies defense motion for
reconsideration.
March 2008: Khadr alleges that he was threatened with rape and
violence by interrogators seeking to extract a confession.
May 2008: The Supreme Court of Canada concludes that Canadian
officials illegally shared information about Khadr with the U.S.
July 2008: Khadr's defence counsel releases video of Khadr
being interrogated by CSIS officials in 2003.
April 2009: Federal Court Judge James O'Reilly orders the
Canadian government to seek Omar Khadr's return, finding it has failed to
ensure that his treatment complied with international human rights norms. That
ruling is overturned on appeal.
Aug. 2009: Canada's Federal Court of Appeal upholds ruling
that requires the Canadian government to press for Omar Khadr's return from
Guantanamo Bay.
Jan. 2010: The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Canada has
violated Omar Khadr's Charter rights by participating in illegal interrogation
methods. It says the federal government must be given a chance to rectify Mr.
Khadr's plight.
April 2010: Khadr's defence team rejects a plea-bargain offer
from U.S. military prosecutors that would have forced him to serve his sentence
in a U.S. prison.
July 2010: Khadr tries to fire his three American lawyers,
including a court-appointed military lawyer, saying he has no chance at a fair
trial. A judge later refuses to allow it.
Oct. 2010: Omar Khadr trial begins at Guatanamo Bay, at the
age of 23. He faced five war crimes charges, including one in the murder of
Special Forces Sergeant First Class Chris Speer, who died in a grenade attack
when Khadr was 15.
Khadr pleads guilty to five war-crimes charges, as part of a
deal that guaranteed he would serve no more than eight years in prison, and
would be eligible for transfer to a Canadian prison after serving 12 months of
his sentence.
May 2011: Khadr's lawyers lose an appeal to have the sentence
cut in half.
April 2012: U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta signs off on
Khadr's transfer. Ottawa receives an application from Khadr officially requesting
a transfer to Canada from Guantanamo Bay.
July 2012: Lawyers file a notice of application in the Federal
Court to ask it to review why Canada was delaying Khadr's repatriation.
Sept. 2012: A U.S. military aircraft picks up Khadr at
Guantanamo Bay, and flies him to Trenton Air Force Base in Canada, where he is
handed over to Canadian authorities.
April 2013: Khadr plans to appeal a plea-bargained guilty plea
on murder and terrorism charges, his lawyer confirms.
May 2013: Khadr is transferred to a maximum-security prison in
Edmonton after an inmate threatens his life at an Ontario penitentiary.
Sept. 2013: A 27-year-old Khadr makes his first public
appearance in more than a decade at an Edmonton courtroom as lawyers argue for
Khadr’s transfer from a federal maximum security prison to a provincial
facility. The transfer is later denied.
Nov. 2013: On Khadr’s appeal to war-crimes convictions, a U.S.
military court orders both sides to file arguments only on whether the court
has the authority to hear the appeal.
Feb. 2014: Khadr is transferred to a medium-security prison in
Alberta.
Mar. 2014: Khadr undergoes shoulder surgery at the University
of Alberta hospital; after discharge, he is temporarily transferred to a
Saskatoon hospital to recuperate.
April 2014: Khadr turns to Alberta’s Court of Appeal to argue
that his eight-year prison term should be recognized as a youth rather than
adult sentence.
May 2014: The widow of U.S. special forces soldier Sgt.
Christopher Speer and American soldier Sgt. Layne Morris sue Khadr for $50
million, alleging the then-teen was responsible for the death of Speer and for
Morris’ injuries in July 2002.
-------------
“The New Atheism” a
sermon by Rev. Brian J. Kiely ... (2003). He has written for ...
This week Dennis Edney, lawyer for Guantanamo prisoner Omar
Khadr spoke here ...
“The New Atheism” a
sermon by Rev. Brian J. Kiely ... (2003). He has written for ...
This week Dennis Edney, lawyer for Guantanamo prisoner Omar
Khadr spoke here ...
April 27 2008
QUOTE:
This week Dennis Edney, laywer 4 Guantanamo prisions omar
khadr spoke here at length about the immorality of that prison and the
continuous physical and psychological torture and dehumanizating of the imates.
-----------------------------
Khadr defence lawyer collapses in court
Opening arguments paint starkly different pictures of 2002
firefight in Afghanistan
Last Updated: Thursday, August 12, 2010 | 10:18 PM ET
Omar Khadr, left, listens to opening statements at his trial. The nearby
numbers indicate members of the military commission jury, who are not allowed
to be sketched. This sketch was reviewed by the U.S. military. (Janet
Hamlin/Pool/CBC) The trial of Canadian Omar Khadr adjourned abruptly on Thursday after his
military lawyer collapsed.
Lt.-Col. Jon Jackson
was recovering in hospital Thursday night on morphine. It was unclear whether
the trial, being held before a U.S. military commission in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, would resume on Friday. But Jackson, who recently had gall-bladder
surgery, will not be in court.
Bryan Broyles,
deputy chief defence counsel with the Office of Military Commissions, said
Jackson might need to be flown to the mainland for treatment.
During
cross-examination of a witness, Jackson asked the judge for a brief recess. It
was granted, but as he walked back to get a drink of water, Jackson sank to the
floor.
Khadr stood up when
Jackson collapsed, but the guards did not react immediately, the CBC’s David
Common reported. Jackson came to after about a minute.
Jackson was taken
away by ambulance for treatment at a base hospital. Proceedings at the military
tribunal were halted.
The dramatic
developments came near the end of a day where both defence and prosecution laid
out the broad strokes of their cases.
Jackson said in the
morning session that his client didn’t kill a U.S. soldier and there is no
forensic evidence to prove he did.
“Omar Khadr did not
kill Sgt. Speer,” Jackson said, referring to Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer,
who died after a grenade exploded during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002.
Khadr
trial
· CBCReporters: #Khadr
trial likely delayed til Monday after lawyer collapses in court, now on
morphine in hospital about 8 hours ago
· CBCReporters: Condition of #Khadr
defence lawyer LCol Jon Jackson unknown, says Dennis Edney — Khadr civilian
lawyer about 10 hours ago
· CBCReporters: #Khadr
stood up when his defence lawyer collapses, guards did not react. Khadr “very
upset, shocked, felt helpless” says civilian lawyer about 10 hours ago
· CBCReporters: Unclear if #Khadr
trial will resume tomorrow after Defence lawyer collapses in court, taken away
by ambulance about 10 hours ago
· CBCReporters: Asst yelled:
medic! after #Khadr
Def lawyer collapses. #Khadr removed immediately. Court locked down.
Lawyer conscious on dep on stretcher about 10 hours ago
The Toronto-born
Khadr, 23, is accused of throwing the deadly grenade, and is being tried on
five charges, including murder in violation of the laws of war.
Jackson argued that
Khadr did not throw the grenade and was at the scene of the firefight only
because his father, Ahmed Khadr, told him to be there.
“He was there
because Ahmed Khadr hated his enemies more than he loved his son.”
Khadr only confessed
to the crime because he was terrified of his interrogators and was “threatened
with rape and murder” during his interrogation, Jackson said.
A ‘terrorist,’ prosecution says
The prosecution
painted a starkly different picture of Khadr in its opening statement, saying
Khadr confessed freely to his alleged crimes and was “a terrorist trained by
al-Qaeda.”
It also showed video
that it alleged shows Khadr planting improvised explosive devices.
In wrapping up, the
prosecution urged the jury to convict Khadr on all charges. Guilty votes from
five of the seven members of the military jury are needed for a conviction.
Omar Khadr is questioned by members of the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service in a Guantanamo Bay prison cell in this
image taken from a 2003 video. (U.S. Department of Defence/Associated Press)The first prosecution
witness, identified only as Col. W., described the day in July 2002 when
coalition forces responded to a tip of a militant cell operating from a
compound in Khost, Afghanistan.
Following a fierce
aerial bombardment, the colonel said special forces went in to try to clear the
area. That’s when Speer was killed by a grenade that landed at his feet.
“I held his hand for
a minute,” Col. W said. “I noticed his eyes were not focused. He was mumbling
incoherently. I tried talking to him, tell him things were OK, ask him to hold
on.”
Speer’s widow, who
was in court for the trial, was tearful while his death was described.
Khadr ‘mumbling’ from wounds
Col. W also
described seeing Khadr in the rubble, alongside three dead militants.
“He was mumbling,”
Col. W. said, describing two gaping wounds in Khadr’s upper chest.
The colonel acknowledged
that he later changed his initial notes of the incident to refer to a wounded
Khadr — a memo in which he had first written that Khadr had been killed.
Khadr looked on
impassively during the proceedings. He was dressed in a jacket and tie and
appeared with his hair cut and beard trimmed.
Khadr’s defenders
maintain he was captured as a child soldier and should therefore be given
special protection under international law.
Khadr was 15 when he
was captured. He is the first person in more than 60 years to face a military
tribunal for crimes allegedly committed as a minor.
Amnesty
International issued a statement Thursday condemning the trial, referring to
“procedures that fail to meet international fair trial standards.”
A UN envoy warned
Tuesday that Khadr’s trial could set a precedent jeopardizing the status of
child soldiers around the world. “Child soldiers must be treated primarily as
victims,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the Secretary
General for Children and Armed Conflict.
On Wednesday, a jury
of seven U.S. military officers — four men and three women whose identities
will be shielded — was seated. Eight other potential jurors were excused after
prosecution and defence challenges.
What is the actual definition of a moderate Muslim? Not to us, but to a
Muslim? Are they looking to reform Islam? Or are they just practicers of the
softer side of jihad? Lying to the kafir instead of outright killing them….
Posted: 10:31 AM ET
American Morning – amFIX blog
Filed under: Islam
Filed under: Islam
A group of young and tech-savvy moderate Muslims are trying to turn the
tide against the growing number of radical messages online. It’s an uphill trek
but one they say has to be done. CNN’s Deb Feyerick tracks Islam’s virtual
battle.
By Jim Bronskill,
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA – Opposition
MPs on the Commons public safety committee have voted down a Conservative
proposal to look at air traveller screening, dismissing it as cheap political
fearmongering.
Opposition members
said the transport committee is already looking at aviation security and can
take on the screening issue — a move that prompted the Tories to accuse them of
ducking an important safety issue.
A recent video
posted on YouTube appears to show two women boarding a transatlantic Air Canada
flight in Montreal without being asked to lift their veils in order to check faces
against passport photos.
The Transport
Department says Canadian airlines must have procedures to verify the identity
of any person whose face is covered.
The committee
convened Tuesday after four Conservative MPs requested a meeting “as soon as
possible” to determine whether airlines are properly confirming the identity of
passengers.
The Liberals said a
study was premature given that former transport minister John Baird ordered an
investigation of the matter that’s still ongoing. The Commons transport committee
has already held 20 hours of hearings on air security, they added, making it
the place to look at identity checks.
The opposition
majority on the committee easily shut down the Tory proposal.
Liberal public
safety critic Mark Holland said the Conservatives brought the issue to the
wrong committee.
“They’re trying to
change the channel,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of political troubles, and
they’re trying to raise the spectre of security.”
Conservative MP
Shelly Glover, one of the four who asked for the meeting, confronted Holland
after the meeting.
“Play the games
elsewhere,” she told him. “Canadians care about this.”
Glover said she’s
heard from people worried about the prospect of travellers covering their faces
to avoid detection, and that Canadians need assurances the skies are safe.
“I want them to know
that when they travel, this government cares about how they feel, and that they
feel comfortable when travelling,” she said.
“There is a lot of
miscommunication out there about what is or isn’t in the regulations. And
frankly we need to address that.”
But Holland said
it’s the Tories who are playing games. He suggested the committee discuss
problems with security at the recent G20 summit in Toronto. Conservative
members refused consent.
“When you play games
and you try to use the politics of fear to score cheap points instead of
actually doing the work of Parliament, I think it’s reprehensible,” Holland
said.
The Conservative
demand for hearings distorts the true picture, he said.
”
The Muslim community
says they have no problem with somebody showing their face. So this creates a
false impression that somehow those in the Muslim community are not being
co-operative when in fact it is completely a falsehood.”
Bloc Quebecois MP
Michel Guimond said that while the issue of identity screening is important, no
constituents had raised the issue of veiled travellers with him.
“Zero… It’s not at
the top of their priorities.”
----------------------
Age does matter, judge says in Khadr case
By Steven Edwards, Postmedia News
U.S. NAVAL BASE
GUANTANAMO, Cuba — Omar Khadr’s defence landed a significant break Tuesday as
the military judge in the case declared jurors can consider his age in deciding
whether he intended to commit a war crime.
Army Col. Patrick
Parrish made the statement as prosecution and defence attorneys questioned 15
military officers who represent the potential jurors in Khadr’s military
commission trial.
He said Khadr’s age
— the Canadian-born terror suspect was 15 at the time he allegedly killed a
U.S. serviceman by tossing a hand grenade during a 2002 firefight in
Afghanistan — is a “fact that will be in evidence.”
But he also insisted
that the commission members — as the jury is known in military parlance — may
“give weight” to Khadr’s age because it speaks to the “intent” element present
in some of the five war crimes charges he faces.
Jeff Groharing,
chief prosecutor in the case, had brought up the question of age when he asked
the officer pool whether its members thought Khadr should be held to a
“different standard” because of his age when captured, and whether they
believed juveniles could be prosecuted for violent crimes.
Parrish intervened
just after the officers — 11 men and four women drawn from all four main
branches of the U.S. military — agreed with the prosecution’s position that age
shouldn’t matter on the issues Groharing raised.
Parrish’s
declaration comes a day after he struck a blow against Khadr’s defence by
ruling that the most damning evidence against him — self-incriminating
statements and a video that apparently shows him making and planting roadside
bombs — is admissible at trial.
Selection of the
jury, which will continue into Wednesday, marked the opening day of Khadr’s
trial at the U.S. navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Khadr, now 23, wore
a suit and tie for the first time in court as the jury pool got its first
glimpse of him.
At all earlier
hearings, the bearded Khadr wore various versions of the galabeya, the
traditional Arab tunic issued to the detainees at Guantanamo.
“I’d like to say
there was a strategy, there wasn’t,” said Dennis Edney, one of Khadr’s two
Canadian lawyer consultants, who is present in Guantanamo. Edney claimed he
just happened to find the grey suit and a red-and-white-coloured tie in a
closet he stumbled across.
“Everything came
together,” he said to laughter among several reporters.
But Edney could not
say whether Khadr will yet make good on his pledge last month to boycott the
trial at some point.
At least five of the
officers will be chosen as jurors and three-fourths of them must agree in order
to convict Khadr.
The case for the
defence will be argued by army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, who emerged as Khadr’s
only U.S. lawyer after the Toronto native last month fired two U.S. civilian
lawyers representing him.
“It is my honour and
privilege to represent Mr. Omar Khadr,” Jackson told the jury pool.
He also had Khadr
stand up and greet the officers, who sat with mainly stone-faced expressions as
he said: “How are ya?”
Jackson proceeded to
come close to delving into much of the evidence in the case as he sought to
elicit how the officers might react if they are selected to sit in judgment.
At one point Parrish
warned Jackson about being too specific about an upcoming witness. The
admonition served as a reminder to the lawyer that approval of commission
members is restricted to ensuring that those confirmed are impartial.
Still, Jackson did
manage to elicit from several of the officers that they might be suspect of
statements made by a person who had been threatened with harm.
The
self-incriminating statements Khadr made are at the heart of the prosecution
case against him in the murder charge he faces.
According to
testimony during earlier hearings, Khadr has admitted to a number of
interrogators that he tossed the grenade that killed Special Forces Sgt. 1st
Class Chris Speer.
But the defence has
additionally argued that Khadr made the statements after his first principal
interrogator — a soldier who was subsequently convicted of abuse of another
detainee — insinuated he might face rape and death if he did not co-operate.
“If they give a
statement after a threat of rape or death, I would think . . . survival comes
into play (and) you would do whatever you need to do to survive,” said one
among the officers, all of whose identities are restricted to rank and service.
Another officer said
people threatened would be “traumatized,” while yet another said they would be
“more likely to tell what the interrogator wants to hear.”
But one officer was
emphatic that people brought up more robustly may not be frightened into
telling a particular story.
“It’s an individual
thing,” this officer said. “It’s all a matter of where people were raised.
Jackson also raised
the question of whether the commissioners, being members of the U.S. military,
might be more sympathetic to the testimony of other officers the prosecution is
planning to call.
“I understand there
is some institutional affiliation, but I think I will be able to weigh the
evidence fairly,” said one officer.
Another said
commissioners would be “corrupting our own legal system” if they gave undue
weight to testimony just because it came from a member of the military.
Groharing drew
attention to the government’s dearth of forensic evidence in the case by asking
whether the officers believed a conviction was possible in the absence of it.
He also spoke of the
“fog of war,” and how the confusion of battle could result in the details of
testimony not always coinciding as recollections of events by witnesses vary.
He was particularly
keen to ascertain that none of the officers bought into the idea that a soldier
entering a theatre of war should simply accept the risk of getting killed.
Several officers
interviewed individually had seen combat in Iraq, where one had lost soldiers
under his command because of an insurgent ambush.
A navy captain said
he believed the Guantanamo detainee camps had presented a “no-win” situation
for the United States, while an air force colonel expressed concern that Khadr
was being brought to trial as long as eight years after his capture.
----------------
26 May 2014 ... Right now, Khadr
is held up as a victim by some circles in Canada and ... All of the above facts are well-known by anyone following the story. .... Khadr
was old enough to know what he was doing and ... 4 · May 26, 2014
at 11:36am ... of getting their money is after the SCOC awards Khadr
whatever his ...
----
www.brandonsun.com/.../educating-omar-khadr-just-doing-what-we-do-christian-university-says-290790381.html?...viewAllComments... - Cached
6 hours ago ... TORONTO -
Taking in former Guantanamo Bay inmate and government-branded terrorist Omar Khadr as a st. ... Educating Omar Khadr:
'Just doing what we do,' Christian university says > All comments ... 4, 2015 at
4:34 PM | Comments: 0 .... 'President's house' will be sold: BU · Money Talk: Dispelling
myth ...
----------------
by Tarek S. Fatah • October
22, 2006 • 0 Comments
August 4, 2006 Canada’s ‘first family of terror’ is caught between two
worlds — hoops and holy war, infidels and the Internet, movie scripts and
martyrdom MICHAEL FRISCOLANTI Maclean’s Magazine, Canada Kareem Khadr is
kneeling on the living room…
-----------------------
The
Americans should have double-tapped Omar Khadr and his brother during the
firefight a couple years ago. With that mistake now firmly ingrained in the
conscience.....
What
Matthew Good and other pro-bring-Omar-the-islamist-terrorist-home people
consistently fail to mention is that Canadian civilian rules of law don't apply
in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States, Cuba, or in the military theatre.
Whether Canada considers a young man of 15-years to be a mere child is
irrelevant. Nebulous "International Law" doesn't apply in the
military theatre either, and Khadrs actions place him precisely there.
Military
ROE allows soldiers to kill and imprison enemy combatants, whether or not they
are trained military personnel wearing military garb or not. The moment a
civilian brandishes a weapon and engages the fight, they're no longer a
civilian. It doesn't matter what they are wearing or whether or not they've
trained in the military. What matters is their decision to fight. At that
precise moment, they exchange their civilian position for that of a combatant.
By engaging in the firefight with his father, Omar Khadr willfully placed
himself in the realm of military jurisprudence. He also figuratively discarded
his Canadian passport and abandoned his Canadian civilian position. He
literally assumed a Taliban identity and fought with the enemy against our
allies.
His plight
is the making of his own hands. As Kate said, he chose to abandon his only
chance at help and pitched a grenade instead.
He should
be prosecuted accordingly. To me, he's a Taliban combatant; not Canadian. He
abandoned his citizenship when he fought for the Taliban. Any Canadian who
fights for a terrorist organization abandons his citizenship, and he or she can
rot in prison if they aren't dumped in theatre as far as I'm concerned.
Bring
Khadr home? Never.July 17, 2008 9:27 AM
------------------
----------------------------
BBC documentary about Hamas' child soldiers
The video below shows footage taken at a youth camp for 15 to 21 year-olds recently organized in the Gaza Strip by Hamas’ Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. Published on 2 Feb 2015
This video-clip shows footage from a youth camp organized by 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in which young cadets demonstrate military skills, such as use of weapons, and simulate the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. Thousands of youth are reported to have attended the camp. The footage is from the Hamas Al-Aqsa TV and from various Internet channels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXb7vh5YFm0
The video below shows footage taken at a youth camp for 15 to 21 year-olds recently organized in the Gaza Strip by Hamas’ Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades. Published on 2 Feb 2015
This video-clip shows footage from a youth camp organized by 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in which young cadets demonstrate military skills, such as use of weapons, and simulate the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. Thousands of youth are reported to have attended the camp. The footage is from the Hamas Al-Aqsa TV and from various Internet channels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXb7vh5YFm0
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