By Arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
At this week's annual meeting of the Canadian Bar Association, the CBA sent a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper demanding that he enter into negotiations with the United States to have 20-year-old Canadian Omar Khadr released from Guantanamo Bay and returned to Canada. What really makes the writing of the letter newsworthy is the fact that except for a couple of lawyers and assorted members of Canada's first family of terrorism, there has been no large outcry about Khadr's repatriation to Canada. Canadians obviously are content to let the little jihadist rot in the American facility in Cuba.
Khadr was taken into custody during a battle in Afghanistan in August 2002. The then 15-year-old was accused of killing U.S. medic Christopher Speer and wounding another American soldier, Layne Morris. Various attempts by the U.S. to put Khadr on trial for these acts have been unsuccessful.
Omar Khadr is the only citizen of a Western country remaining at the American detention facility in Cuba. Other Western nations such as Australia have already negotiated the release of their citizens and brought them home. Under new prime minister Gordon Brown (and Brown really is "new" compared to Canada's "new government") Britain wants to have those who are not citizens of the U.K. but who were resident there before they left for jihad returned as well. But until the CBA's letter, there has been virtual silence about having Khadr returned to Canada.
It is indeed surprising that the usual suspects aren't demanding or haven't been demanding Khadr's return from Guantanamo Bay. It's almost un-Canadian. Even J. Parker MacCarthy, the president of the Canadian Bar Association acknowledged this fact when he said that "I guess we can be faulted for not having intervened earlier". But it is indeed strange that those who are so quick to blame the United States for 9/11 and its aftermath have been so silent about the detention of the 15-year-old for five years with no particular end in sight.
Certainly there is no political reason for the Harper government to try and get Omar Khadr back to Canada. When Omar's then 14-year-old Karim returned to Canada in April 2004, in order to receive free medical treatment for the injuries that he sustained in another battle, Paul Martin received all kinds of flack for merely stating the obvious; he had a right to come back because he's a Canadian citizen. That statement made Martin look like he sympathized with the little terror tyke and is probably the reason why the current opposition, especially Taliban Jack, have been so silent on the issue of Omar Khadr's repatriation.
There would likely be an outcry concerning the detention of a minor if Omar's name was anything but Khadr. As his brother Abdurahman so aptly put it, "We are an al Qaeda family". The family's patriarch was a close associate of Osama bin Laden and was killed in the fighting that saw Karim injured. The family does nothing but show utter contempt for this country while living here to take advantage of their rights, not the least of which is free health care. This is undoubtedly the reason for the silence of pretty well everyone until the Canadian Bar Association brought the matter up at their convention.
The reaction to Omar Khadr's detention shows that even those who pride themselves on "tolerance" and "compassion" and bend over backwards to find excuses for terrorists have limits. On the other hand it is somewhat disconcerting when Canada remains the only Western country not going to bat for one of its citizens, no matter how much of a scumbag that citizen is.
But bringing Omar Khadr back to Canada would be embarrassing for not only the government but the country. Should Khadr be brought back here and put on trial for the death of Sgt. Speer, he would have to be tried as a youth because he was only 15 at the time of the killing. If convicted, the closest he could get to an American-style sentence would be that given out by Judge Harry Stone on the sitcom Night Court – a $50 fine and time served. Just kidding; there's no way he would get a $50 fine. It truly would be an embarrassment.
Nevertheless, trying Omar Khadr as a young offender will get the attention of the world and might (just might) wake up the members of the august upper chamber and get them to take reforming our lax criminal justice system just a little more seriously. If that could be accomplished, it would be well worth bringing Omar Khadr back to Canada.
It is too early to tell whether the actions of the Canadian Bar Association will wake up other activists or whether the lack of interest will remain. It will be interesting to see what happens.
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