How to nearly end up in Guantanamo

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Koring obtains new documents related to the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik.

Margin notes on CSIS documents related to the conversation, marked “Secret” and now in the possession of The Globe and Mail, highlight the fact that Mr. Abdelrazik was only on a U.S. no-fly list – insufficient to keep him from returning to Canada. It’s unclear what transpired during the conversation, but soon afterward both Air Canada and Lufthansa abruptly cancelled Mr. Abdelrazik’s ticket home. He would spend another five years in forced exile.

The “Canadian Eyes Only” documents also reveal for the first time officially that U.S. security agents wanted Mr. Abdelrazik shipped to Guantanamo Bay. If CSIS managed to delay Mr. Abdelrazik’s return in 2004, it had the effect of buying time while U.S. agents worked to render him to the notorious camp for suspected terrorists.

This week : Good news, bad news

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 10:06 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

Adnan Abidi/Reuters

Fixing the House

Fed up with Ottawa’s increasingly partisan tone, Green Leader Elizabeth May has launched an attack ad attacking attack ads. More civility in, and out of, the House is a good idea, and we urge all parties to take heed. For example, Tory Michael Chong’s motion to bring back decorum to question period is stuck in committee limbo, and risks dying if an election is called. Perhaps a pledge from MPs to show up in the chamber more often might get things moving in the right direction.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

While Steve Jobs has been forced to hand over the reins at Apple due to illness, it was reassuring to see him appear on a stage last week in San Francisco to reveal the company’s latest tablet, the sleek iPad 2. Jobs looked frail, but his participation was nevertheless a welcome reminder that he still has a hand in the game. We shudder to imagine what technology and design would look like without him.

The age of Discovery

The shuttle Discovery returned to Earth this week completing its 39th, and final, trip into space. In service for 30 years, the oldest remaining shuttle had many important missions, including the deployment, and later repair, of the Hubble telescope and construction of the International Space Station. Among the special tributes was a morning wake-up call for the astronauts from Star Trek’s William Shatner. Only two more shuttle missions remain before all the craft are retired. Time for the next generation.

Fashion and passion

The International Football Association has banned the wearing of “snoods”—combo neck-warmers and hoods—during matches. Critics, particularly in the English Premier League, groused that they were unmanly, but FIFA president Sepp Blatter says it’s a matter of safety. “It can also be dangerous. It can be like to hang somebody.” Given the amount of diving and fakery in the men’s game, it might be too late to preserve its dignity. Thankfully, there’s always the example of Canada’s women, who beat Scotland, Italy and England en route to a berth in the final of the Cyprus Cup. With our country set to host the 2015 Women’s World Cup, all the more reason to cheer.

Bad news

Rahmat Gul/AP

Mo’ Gitmo

President Barack Obama came to power vowing to shut down the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and bring its detainees—many held without charge for a decade—to justice. But in the face of strong opposition to warehousing and trying accused terrorists on U.S. soil, he reversed the first part of that plan. This week, he took another huge step backwards, reinstating George W. Bush’s system of military tribunals. Surely the world’s leading democracy shouldn’t fear free and open trails. Justice must be seen to be done.

Libya’s needs

While the international community dithers about imposing a no-fly zone over Libyan skies, Col. Moammar Gadhafi continues to use his air force to bomb and strafe both rebels and civilians. Removing this madman from power would clearly benefit not only the country, but the whole world. So far, the only thing anti-Gadhafi forces have been getting are snooping visitors, like the eight British spies and commandos captured and sent packing last week. Too bad the West seems to favour intrigue over real action.

Lingering danger

Spring is creeping closer, but winter remains Canada’s season of danger. In Chambly, Que., a man died when the snow fort he was making for his stepson collapsed on top of him. In southwestern Ontario, an eight-year-girl is missing and presumed drowned after falling through the ice of a creek behind her home. In Moncton, N.B., the city’s salt storage dome roof caved in after yet another heavy snowfall. Never underestimate nature.

Age and awareness

Elderly drivers are half as likely as younger ones to see pedestrians on the curb or sidewalk, according to a new study by Israeli researchers. Not only do they have a narrower field of vision, they take longer to respond to hazards once they finally notice them. And it seems that age-inspired ignorance isn’t limited to the road. Alan Simpson, the 79-year-old co-chairman of Obama’s deficit commission, went on TV this week to talk about social security and ended up chiding kids for their baggy pants and the crazy music of “Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg” and “Enema Man.” Learn to Google, Grandpa.

Where are they now?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 2:22 PM - 36 Comments

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has hired Howard Anglin as his chief of staff.

In recent years, Mr. Anglin stepped forward to defend the Conservative government’s position that Omar Khadr was not a child soldier. In 2008, he testified before the subcommittee on international human rights.

In 2006, he and Alykhan Velshi, currently Mr. Kenney’s director of communications, penned a piece for National Review, in which they stated their objections to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

The rest of Anglin’s writing for National Review is here. His writing for the Daily Caller is here.

Who is the real Omar Khadr?

By Michael Friscolanti - Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 71 Comments

Michelle Shephard/Toronto Star

In exchange for another eight years in prison—and the chance to be a free man in Canada long before that—Omar Khadr consented to a long list of strict conditions. He cannot sue the U.S. government for damages, regardless of how many torture sessions he may (or may not) have endured inside the barbed-wire walls of Guantánamo Bay. He will never step foot on American soil for as long as he lives. And he is not allowed to profit one penny from public speaking tours or movie deals or anything else that would involve selling his saga to the highest bidder. Any such proceeds, the agreement says, will go straight “to the Government of Canada.”

Khadr has read a lot of books during his stint behind bars (from steamy Danielle Steele novels to Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom), and his pen pals include an English professor at an Edmonton university. But when he signed his name to that seven-page plea deal on Oct. 13, he received a first-hand lesson in the meaning of irony: the same government that spent many years and millions of dollars fighting to keep him out of Canada now owns the exclusive rights to his life story.

Continue…

For the Tories, happiness is a warm F-35

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 5, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Trevor Hagan/CP

So much in modern life is a combination of problems that have already been solved and problems that can’t be solved at all. Take Emirates Airlines Flight 201, which was escorted by Canadian fighter jets through Canadian airspace on Oct. 29 as it flew from Dubai to New York City. The airplane was carrying cargo from Yemen. This was a day when other airplanes were found to be carrying cargo from Yemen of the potentially explosive variety. So Flight 201 found itself sprouting fighter escorts. Out of an “abundance of caution,” NORAD said later.

Dimitri Soudas, who speaks for the Prime Minister, could hardly contain his glee. Here was a chance to show that the Harper government is spending wisely when it allocates $16 billion to buy 65 F-35 fighter planes. Soudas put out a news release: “Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals and their coalition partners would cancel the deal to buy the F-35s. They would rather use kites to defend Canada than fighter jets. Canada’s air force needs the right equipment to protect Canadian airspace.”

In examining whether F-35s would have constituted “the right equipment” on Oct. 29, it may be handy to recall precisely what NORAD was worried about. Cargo on other planes had been found to contain explosive devices. So “the right equipment” would need to sort through the cargo compartments of this plane, at a distance, while airborne, to detect, isolate and remove the explosive.

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'People show empathy'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 1:25 PM - 0 Comments

On the eve of Omar Khadr’s guilty plea, his lawyer vents.

“People show empathy,” Edney said of Canadians’ reaction to Khadr’s life story, which for the past eight years has seen him held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ”(After) the fact, nothing happens. I feel, not only the Canadian government, but the Canadian people have let down a citizen, a most vulnerable citizen.”

The Harper government has apparently agreed that Mr. Khadr will be moved to Canadian custody after a year of his sentence.

Under what treaty would Khadr come home?

By John Geddes - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

News that Omar Khadr pleaded guilty this morning to war-crimes charges before a U.S. military tribunal comes with reports that, after serving another year in Guantanamo Bay, he will be allowed to apply to spend the rest of an eight-year term in a Canadian prison.

There are many questions left to be answered about the details of the plea bargain and the stance of the Canadian government on this disturbing case. But here’s one that springs to mind: Under what treaty would Khadr be repatriated to serve out a sentence in Canada?

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Is Omar Khadr coming back to Canada?

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 5:22 PM - 0 Comments

More than eight years after being shot and captured on an Afghanistan battlefield—at the tender age of 15—Omar Khadr could be on his way back to Canada. Or not. It all depends on which source you believe: the anonymous kind, or the prime minister.

The ever-unreliable Khadr rumour mill started churning again this morning when Al Arabiya, a news channel in Dubai, reported that a settlement has already been reached: in exchange for pleading guilty to terrorism charges, the station said, the Toronto native will be allowed to leave the notorious U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and serve the remainder of his sentence (whatever it is) in a Canadian jail.

Nathan Whitling, one of Khadr’s Edmonton-based lawyers, would only say “that there is a potential deal in the works” and refused to provide further details. But “unnamed sources” are filling in the blanks. According to the Toronto Star, the deal was proposed by Khadr’s defence team and approved Wednesday night by the convening authority for war crimes tribunals at Gitmo. The National Post goes one step further, saying Khadr will plead guilty to all charges he faces—including murder—and will serve eight more years in prison, seven of them in Canada.

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'After careful consideration'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 12, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 0 Comments

In not-at-all surprising news, the government will appeal last week’s Federal Court ruling on Omar Khadr.

“After careful consideration of the legal merits of the July 5, 2010, ruling from the Federal Court, the Government of Canada will appeal the decision to the Federal Court of Appeal.

“This case raises important issues concerning the Crown prerogative over foreign affairs. “As the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in an earlier case involving Mr. Khadr, ‘it would not be appropriate for the Court to give direction as to the diplomatic steps necessary to address the breaches of Mr. Khadr’s Charter rights.’ “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 business of Guantanamo, meanwhile, is proceeding as smoothly as ever.

'The steps taken to date were found not to remedy the breach'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 5, 2010 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

The federal court rules on a review of the government’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the treatment of Omar Khadr.

Omar Khadr sought judicial review of Canada’s response to the Supreme Court of Canada’s declaration in Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr (2010) that Canada had breached his Charter rights.  Canada responded by deciding that it would continue to refuse to request his repatriation from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and by requesting, by way of diplomatic note, that the United States not use any of the information Canada had supplied it in its prosecution of Mr. Khadr.

The Court concluded that Canada’s decisions were amenable to judicial review, even though they involved the executive’s exercise of a royal prerogative, because they affected the rights and legitimate expectations of Mr. Khadr.  The breach of his rights remained ongoing and the Court concluded that he had a legitimate expectation, following the Supreme Court of Canada’s declaration, that Canada would take steps to remedy its breach.  The steps taken to date were found not to remedy the breach.

The full ruling is here.

What might have been (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 12, 2010 at 2:08 PM - 10 Comments

The Globe looks at the concerns within NATO in late 2006.

A memo obtained by The Globe and Mail shows that in 2006 the federal government was briefed on a lobbying campaign by NATO allies aimed at getting the Kabul government to create stronger safeguards for detainees after prisoner abuses elsewhere. “London, The Hague and Canberra [Australia] are deeply concerned about the absence of solid legal protections for detainees, which – in the age of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib – imperils domestic support for the Afghanistan mission,” said the memo of Dec. 4, 2006, written by diplomat Richard Colvin.

The memo was written after consultation with Catherine Bloodworth, a Foreign Affairs colleague, as well as the military attaché in Canada’s Kabul embassy. It was approved by David Sproule – then Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan – and was e-mailed to dozens of officials at Foreign Affairs, the Privy Council Office and National Defence.

Abu Ghraib and everything after

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 11:06 AM - 39 Comments

A government official tells CBC that three options for detainees were considered as Canadian forces moved into Kandahar, but that the failures and controversies of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay discouraged Canada from holding those it captured.

The People vs. Ex-Generalissimo Blair

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 59 Comments

It’s supposed to be Sept. 12—that’s to say, the post-9/11 era. For over seven years the entire Western world was forced to live out a kind of geopolitical Groundhog Day in which Bush, Cheney, Rummy and the rest of the gang woke up each dawn to the same eternal Tuesday morning in September, the same long shadows of the Twin Towers, the same undying certainty of another six decades of hard, cold, martial winter. It wasn’t only the ideologically opposed among the campus left and the Euro-elites: the vast mass of a once supportive citizenry got ground down, too, exhausted by the very lingo of the “war on terror” and anxious to inter it with the Bush presidency. That’s why Barack Obama was cheered from Berkeley to Berlin. He offered liberation. To invert the old line, war may be interested in him, but he wasn’t interested in war. And in those heady days of late 2008 that seemed almost plausible.
Jaw-jaw is better than war-war, as Churchill said, although he might feel differently if he had to sit through an Obama state of the union. But what about law-law? In the United States, the United Kingdom and even Canada, it’s not enough to move on to Sept. 12: the Bush era itself has to be put on trial. In London, something called “the Chilcot inquiry” has been investigating the process by which the country signed on to the Iraq invasion. For weeks, the usual bunch of shifty grandees have killed any potential awkward line of inquiry with the all-purpose brush-off, “You’ll have to ask Mr. Blair about that.” So finally they did, summoning the now reviled prime minister into the witness box to grill him on the “legality” of the Iraq invasion. Outside, protesters denounced “Bliar,” as his name is now universally spelled: “BLIAR LIED! THOUSANDS DIED!” Like a pedophile serial killer, he was smuggled into the building before dawn, lest the mob turn on him: “The People vs. Ex-Generalissimo Bliar”—or, at any rate, as near as his former comrades on the left seem likely to get to hauling him up before a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
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Bad news for Omar Khadr? Sort of

By Michael Friscolanti - Friday, January 29, 2010 at 5:47 PM - 182 Comments

When Omar Khadr eventually returns to Canada (and he will someday, whether his fellow Canadians like it or not) his triumphant press conference won’t include a special thanks to the Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision released Friday, the country’s senior judges struck down Khadr’s latest bid for freedom, ruling that Prime Minister Stephen Harper cannot be forced to ask the United States to repatriate al-Qaeda’s most famous child soldier. Simply put, the court concluded that elected officials, not judges, are in charge of our country’s foreign policy—including whether or not to go to bat for a Toronto teenager who lived with Osama bin Laden, allegedly killed a U.S. soldier on the battlefields of Afghanistan, and has spent the past seven years locked inside the notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he has clearly been mistreated, if not brutally tortured.

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Where will he land?

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 6 Comments

The exact timeline is still sketchy, but at some point in the coming weeks, a blindfolded Omar Khadr will be escorted out of his jail cell, shackled at the wrists and ankles, and carried onto a military cargo plane. Though he won’t have the pleasure of witnessing it with his own eyes, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—Khadr’s prison for the past seven years, beginning at the tender age of 16—will disappear into the distance within a matter of minutes.

Where he will land is still a mystery. The White House announced last week that the 23-year-old is slated to face a military commission—somewhere on U.S. soil—for his alleged war crimes, including the murder of an American soldier in Afghanistan. Yet in the very same breath, Barack Obama’s attorney general left open the possibility that Khadr, a Canadian citizen, could be transferred to his home country before a trial ever begins. Fuelling such speculation is a separate hearing in front of the Supreme Court of Canada, which must decide, once and for all, whether Stephen Harper should be forced to at least ask the Americans to repatriate Khadr. The legal arguments are complex, but at the heart of the case is a growing sense that if the Prime Minister simply asked for his release, Washington would happily oblige.

In other words, that plane leaving Gitmo could fly straight to Canada.

It’s not quite that simple, of course. The Supreme Court may not issue a ruling until the new year, and even if it does order Harper to bite his lip and lobby for Khadr, there is no guarantee the Americans will hand him over carte blanche. But for a boy (now man) who has grown up inside Gitmo’s barbed wire, the end has never felt so close. Which means the biggest question of all—the one Harper is fighting in court to avoid—must now be answered: if Omar does return to Canada, what exactly do we do with him?

“I’m not going to argue that he hasn’t served enough time, but I might argue that he’s still a threat,” says Layne Morris, a retired U.S. army sergeant who lost his right eye in the 2002 firefight that ended with Khadr’s capture. “It comes down to security. Are we confident we can let this guy go and he’s not going to try to cut people’s throats next week? That’s the overwhelming question.”

There is no easy answer. To many, Khadr is still the loyal son of a senior al-Qaeda operative, a Toronto-born teenager who lived with Osama bin Laden and allegedly tossed a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a decorated Special Forces medic. To others, he is an innocent child soldier thrust into battle by his radical dad and tortured, over and over, until he confessed to a crime he didn’t commit. It’s no wonder the feds would rather let someone else (i.e., the Americans) figure out which label fits best.

If he is flown back to Canada, Khadr could—at least theoretically—face a bevy of criminal charges, including high treason (“waging war” against an army allied with Canada) and participation in a terrorist organization (al-Qaeda). But would a jury ever convict someone who was shot by U.S. troops at age 15, shipped to the world’s most notorious prison at 16, and who was clearly under the spell of his fundamentalist father? Even with a guilty verdict, it’s hard to imagine his young age would warrant a sentence other than time served.

The other option—allowing Khadr to reunite with his extremist family, where he is sure to become a folk hero for wannabe jihadists—is equally unattractive. His sister once wished she had “the guts” to be a suicide bomber, his eldest brother is an accused al-Qaeda gunrunner, and another brother is paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by Pakistani troops in the same clash that killed their father. The Cleavers they are not.

“Omar has been branded by the family,” says Dennis Edney, that family’s long-time lawyer. “When you talk about the Khadr brand, there is no distinction. But I have talked to Omar about not going back to his family, and Omar understands that and has agreed to that—and his family has agreed to that.” (Members of the family did not respond to emails from Maclean’s.)

Earlier this year, Edney released a so-called “reintegration plan” for his client that includes religious and psychological counselling, supervision by law enforcement officials, and a home-schooling program delivered by King’s University College in Edmonton. “I would take him home with me, in Alberta,” Edney says. “He’s just a kid who wants to be a doctor and who wants to just get on with his life. I’ve never met a more peaceful guy.”

It’s a difficult description to swallow; fellow Canadians have seen the infamous video of a young Omar smiling as he wires together land mines destined for the feet of coalition soldiers. Stephen Xenakis, a U.S. psychiatrist who has treated Khadr over the past year, has his own opinions about whether his patient is still a threat to society. And although he would prefer to save those opinions for a possible day in court, he does offer this much: “He is a really kind, decent, thoughtful, sensitive young man, and he cares about people. It’s really important to appreciate that he does not have any vindictiveness in his nature at all. There is not a hard edge to him at all, and there is no sense of vengeance.”

What Khadr wants, Xenakis says, is “fair justice.” Speer’s widow and two young children crave the very same thing.

Omar Khadr—closer to home?

By Michael Friscolanti - Saturday, November 14, 2009 at 8:47 AM - 26 Comments

After seven long years in captivity, Omar Khadr is finally leaving the notorious U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he is not a free man. Not yet, at least.

In the latest chapter of the endless Khadr saga, the White House announced today that the 23-year-old Toronto native will be transferred to an American jail cell to face trial on U.S. soil. Exactly when he will arrive, or where he is going, has yet to be decided, but one thing is clear: despite his tender age, his celebrity supporters, and questionable evidence, the Americans still consider Omar Khadr a murderer.

However, as with all things Khadr, there’s a twist: while announcing the surprise transfer, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder also left open the prospect that Khadr, a Canadian citizen, could be sent home before his trial ever begins—fuelling suspicion that if Ottawa simply asked for Omar’s return, the U.S. would happily oblige. When asked about that possibility, Holder told a Washington press conference: “We will, as that case proceeds, see how it should be ultimately treated.”

At the heart of all the uncertainty is a separate hearing in front of the Supreme Court of Canada, which is considering whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper should be forced to at least ask the U.S. to send Khadr home. Simply put, two lower courts have already ruled that the federal government violated Khadr’s Charter rights in 2004, when he was grilled by visiting Canadian officials at the Gitmo facility even though they knew he endured three weeks of sleep deprivation leading up to the interrogation. To compensate for that Charter breach, the Federal Court ordered Ottawa to seek his repatriation.

The Harper government appealed the judgment—twice—claiming that the business of foreign affairs belongs to elected officials, not the courts, and that the feds have no legal duty to lobby on behalf of every citizen arrested abroad. “We’re in the realm of diplomacy here,” federal lawyer Robert Frater told the Supreme Court justices this morning. “The government has the right to decide what requests should be made, how they should be made, and when they should be made. The courts are not in the best position to do that.”

Khadr’s lawyers, though, insist this is “a unique case.” Omar, they say, does not deserve special treatment because he is a Canadian citizen detained abroad; he deserves special treatment because he is a Canadian citizen detained abroad who had his Charter rights violated by his home country. As the Federal Court of Appeal said in an earlier ruling, that “opens up a different dimension.”

The stakes could not be higher. During all the years Khadr has been locked away at Guantanamo Bay, Ottawa has never once—not under the Liberals, and not under the Conservatives—asked the United States to send him home. The feds have simply stuck to the same old talking point: Khadr is facing serious charges in the U.S., and we respect the American justice system. But if the Supreme Court sides against Ottawa in the coming weeks, Harper can no longer hide behind those words. He will be forced to ask for Khadr back—and if Holder’s latest remarks are any indication, the White House just might say yes. It’s a scenario the prime minister is desperate to avoid (his government has already spent more than $1.3 million in legal fees fighting Khadr at every turn).

The son of a senior al-Qaeda fundraiser, Khadr was famously shot and captured by American troops during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. Just 15 years old at the time, he was shipped to Gitmo and later confessed to throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer, a decorated U.S. army medic with two young children. But in the years since, human rights groups and the Canadian Bar Association have rallied to the teenager’s defence, claiming his confession was the result of incessant torture and insisting that he cannot be held responsible for his actions because he was technically a child soldier. Should he ever return to Canada, Khadr would no doubt receive a hero’s welcome at the airport.

But if that day ever comes, it is federal authorities that will have to figure out what to do with him. It is a no-win situation, to put it mildly. Charge him under Canada’s anti-terror laws, and the case is certain to flop. What jury would convict a 15-year-old boy who was clearly following the orders of his radical father? The other option—reuniting him with his extremist family, where he is sure to become an inspiration for wannabe Toronto 18s—is no less nauseating. This is a family, remember, that is under constant police surveillance. Omar’s sister had her laptop seized by the RCMP; his older brother, an alleged al-Qaeda gunrunner, is facing extradition to the U.S.; and every other accused terrorist in Canada seems to count the family among their closest friends.

It’s no secret why Stephen Harper is fighting to keep Khadr in U.S. custody.
For now, at least, he will get his wish. Khadr is among ten high-profile detainees who will be flown to the U.S. to face American justice, including the Sept. 11 mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The accused 9/11 plotters, five in all, will stand trial in a Manhattan courthouse, just blocks from where the Twin Towers fell, while five others, including Khadr, will have their fate decided by a U.S. military commission. President Barack Obama originally cancelled the Bush-era commissions during his first week in the White House, but he has since reinstated them, with new rules governing due process. Hearsay evidence, or evidence gleaned from torture, will not be admissible.

To Khadr’s defence team, those assurances ring hollow. “We thought that the incoming Obama administration signaled a new day with respect to these cases—a new respect for civil liberties, an abhorrence of torture, a respect for the time-honoured legal procedures and protections that are mandated by the constitution and enforced by the federal courts,” said Barry Coburn, one of Khadr’s American attorneys, who was in Ottawa today for the Supreme Court hearing.

Dennis Edney, Khadr’s long-time Canadian lawyer, said at the very least, the military commission is preferable to an American civilian court. “He would be dead in the water, just because of the climate of terrorism in the United States,” Edney told Maclean’s. “You could almost say the best thing that could happen to him is to stay within the military commission process, because at the end of the day, a military jury understands the law of war. They understand a young kid involved in a battle that lasted minutes—and then spent the next seven years at Guantanamo.”

Layne Morris, a retired Special Forces sergeant, lost an eye in the 2002 ambush that ended with Khadr’s capture. He doesn’t particularly like the idea of Omar landing on American soil, but if it means he will finally stand trial, he supports it. “I have a responsibility to seek justice in this case on behalf of a lot of people,” says Morris, who stays in touch with Sgt. Speer’s widow, Tabitha. “But I’ve got absolutely zero problem if he goes to a military tribunal and they say: ‘Alright, you’re sentenced to time served.’ I don’t care. I’m more concerned about the security. Regardless of how many years you give him, are we confident that we can let this guy go and he’s not going to be trying to cut people’s throats next week? That’s the overwhelming question.”

One of many.

'Serious and pervasive problems'

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, September 27, 2009 at 11:59 PM - 0 Comments

As Andy Worthington notes, the National Institute Of Military Justice recently released a report of its observers on the proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, three of whom attended portions of the trial of Omar Khadr. Jonathan E. Tracy, formerly of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corp, observed proceedings against Khadr and Mohammed Kamin and concludes as follows.

At Guantánamo I observed competent and well‐prepared attorneys litigate important issues for their clients. It was reassuring to see the professionalism that all the parties are bringing to these proceedings. However, this did not mitigate the serious and pervasive problems inherent to the military commissions. The defense teams face numerous obstacles in the preparation of their cases, the untested system has leaks in numerous places, and the existential justification for military commissions remains unresolved and obstructs legitimacy.

The many implications of Omar Khadr

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 26, 2009 at 1:10 PM - 55 Comments

Tonda MacCharles tries to read Stephen Harper’s mind.

Even some Conservatives privately admit they have been taken aback by Harper’s utter indifference to pleas about Khadr’s plight. There’s no clear explanation for it. Is it good foreign policy? Good politics? Or simple ideological stubborness?

There are hints, but no explicit statements, that the Americans still want to prosecute Khadr. The government denies any knowledge of the Obama administration’s plans for the only Westerner left in Guantanamo….

The Khadrs carry political baggage here. Harper may simply want to avoid getting stung the way former prime minister Jean Chretien was. Chretien in 1996 asked Pakistani authorities to release Ahmed Said Khadr, Omar’s father, who later turned out key to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda fundraising efforts in Afghanistan. Photos of him at the hospitalized Khadr’s bedside loom large still.

It could be that Harper, having given up so much conservative political ground on fiscal and social issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, does not want to risk further angering his base of supporters by appearing to be anything less than “tough on terror.”

Canada v. Khadr, the Empire Strikes Back

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 12:49 PM - 25 Comments

After the jump, the official statement from Foreign Affairs on the government’s second appeal of the Federal Court ruling that it repatriate Omar Khadr.

For the sake of argument, here is the Supreme Court’s previous ruling on issues related to Khadr’s imprisonment and here is the Federal Court’s ruling.

Both links courtesy of the indispensable Khadr files database maintained here. Continue…

Now what?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 11:46 AM - 53 Comments

The Federal Court of Appeal upholds the Federal Court’s ruling that the Canadian government is obligated to seek Omar Khadr’s repatriation.

Here is the decision in its entirety. Select excerpts after the jump. Continue…

Let us storm the beaches of Sudan, Iran and Guantanamo

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 11:13 AM - 10 Comments

Apropos of all sorts of things, here is Stephen Harper’s answer to a National Post questionnaire in 2004 that asked “What have we learned from the William Sampson affair?”

Stephen Harper, Canadian Alliance: “We’ve learned that “soft power” doesn’t work when dealing with regimes that only understand hard power. Liberals cling to this doctrine, but in practice it has failed time and again. The highest duty of government is the protection of its citizens. Canada must ensure consequences when foreign governments torture or kill our people.”

Moving on up

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 11:20 AM - 3 Comments

It was a favour, dressed up as a snub. When the United States cut a deal last week to send four Muslim Uighurs from Guantánamo Bay to Bermuda, it did so behind Britain’s back—not out of spite but compassion. Washington’s tin ear for Commonwealth protocol may be legendary. But even it knew London would bristle at being cut out of the loop on a matter of national security. Bermuda, after all, remains a self-governing protectorate of the United Kingdom, which means foreign governments doing business with it are supposed to give the mother country courtesy calls on issues that might carry foreign policy implications.

But as the former detainees roamed the beaches of their new island home, it became increasingly clear that Uncle Sam had spared Britain a massive diplomatic headache. The Guantánamo Uighurs are part of a Muslim separatist movement hailing from China’s far northwestern territory, which Beijing treats as a terrorist threat. Any country that took them in risked diplomatic or economic recriminations from China—though by all accounts the men posed negligible risk. By the weekend, senior U.S. officials were confirming that they had deliberately kept the transfer deal with Bermuda secret, providing the U.K. with some much-needed deniability.

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Obama’s torture problem is only just beginning

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 10:59 AM - 44 Comments

Here is a problem.

Late in 2006, a Guantánamo Bay prison detainee named Abu Zubaydah recounted the treatment he received in 2002 at the hands of his American captors.

“After the beating I was then placed in the small box,” he said. “The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don’t know how long I remained in the small box, I think I may have slept or maybe fainted . . .

“A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds was very painful. I vomited.”

Zubaydah is believed to be a senior associate of Osama bin Laden. He was describing his treatment to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In February 2007 the ICRC submitted to the U.S. government a report on the treatment Zubaydah and 13 other high-value detainees faced in a network of “black sites” around the world. Some time later a copy of that classified report found its way to a reporter named Mark Danner. Danner’s 13,000-word account of the ICRC report, the first public description of its contents, is in the current issue of the New York Review of Books.

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The new world order

By Paul Wells - Monday, February 16, 2009 at 10:50 AM - 36 Comments

For all the assorted domestic and foreign woes weighing down on it, the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is still in the relatively sunlit early days when it can afford to plan a few steps ahead. So when Vice-President Joe Biden showed up at the Munich Security Conference with a sunny and soothing speech, his largely European audience should have known other emissaries with a darker message wouldn’t be far behind.

By itself Biden’s was an extraordinary speech, and when he delivered it on Saturday morning to the world’s foreign policy elite in a packed ballroom at the Bayerischer Hof hotel, it was obvious why Barack Obama had chosen him for the No. 2 slot. Biden enhances the credibility of his boss’s foreign policy message simply by being the guy who delivers it. A veteran U.S. senator, he knows the Munich crowd well. He has attended the annual weekend getaway in the Bavarian capital many times. He knows it is a more focused, less ostentatious and arguably more important gathering than the glittering World Economic Forum in Davos. A perfect place for the Obama team to road-test its message to the world.

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