What About Omar Khadr?

The release of the Arar Commission inquiry report last week, revealing the serious mistakes made by the RCMP in handling the situation for which no one has yet been held accountable in Canada or the US, brings to mind the fate of another Canadian lost in the grips of the so-called US military/justice system: Omar Khadr.

The findings of the Arar inquiry ought to spur on immediate action from this federal government to ensure the well-being and safety of this young 'detainee' who now, as a result of the recently passed US detainee bill, will have absolutely no possibility of appealing any decision made through this revised military commission process. It's long past time for Canada's Foreign Affairs department to act forcefully before Mr Khadr's fate is completely doomed.

Omar Khadr was seriously wounded and captured in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. He was 15 years old at the time and was accused of killing a US soldier. Since that time, allegations of torture and serious mistreatment have been recorded by Amnesty International along with Mr Khadr's lawyer, who has also appealed to the UN for help. The Canadian government (neither the former Liberal, nor the present Conservative one which now runs the country) has not done enough to pressure the US military to respect his human rights.

Unlike the Arar situation, in which the RCMP and not the government itself was to blame, Omar Khadr's situation rests solely on the shoulders of those who hold office in Ottawa. It is also quite possible that the RCMP and/or CSIS has handed over so-called intel on Khadr which may have had an influence on his case since the Khadr family does have a history of being in league with al Qaeda and a senior CSIS official interrogated Khadr at Gitmo digging for any intel he could come up with. The family's history, however, did not stop the US authorities from releasing Omar's older brother Abdurahman to Afghanistan after his detention in Gitmo in 2003.

The sins of family members cannot be held against the entire family and we have absolutely no way of knowing what kind of evidence the US military may have to implicate Omar Khadr in the crime which he is accused of perpetrating and, most likely, if he is ultimately tried any facts will be shielded from public scrutiny due to the old standby that the Bush administration uses with great abandon these days: 'national security reasons'.

The overriding issue in Omar's incarceration though ought to be the allegations of torture. Just as in Arar's case, who was sent to Syria to be tortured out of the reach of the Canadian government, those who are holding Omar Khadr are accountable to no one. It is not inconceivable that Omar has and is being tortured as well since everyone is quite familiar with the Bush administration's approval of so-called 'alternative' interrogation techniques that have been publicly admitted by the president and which had now been legally sanctioned by the US congress.

According to legal experts, the new detainee bill will ultimately be met with court challenges - some of which may find themselves in the hands of the Supreme Court in the future - but in the meantime, the detainees are being held without access to humanitarian groups while the US government does everything it can to hide the actual conditions at Gitmo. Bush has stated several times that he would like to close the facility and repatriate the detainees but the fact that a new $30 million wing built by Halliburton opened in August implies that the detention facility is far from being shut down any time soon.

Rolling Stone magazine recently did a lengthy expose of Omar Khadr's story, yet he seems to have fallen off the radar screen in Canada. No doubt there are likely many Canadians who believe he is guilty because the US has said so and there are those who have assigned guilt by association due to his family's past. We cannot allowed our country to be swayed by these assertions, especially since we are all very painfully aware now that our government agencies have been much too quick to pass judgment on Canadians in US custody while helping the Americans to eventually torture them.

It is doubtful that Canada's Foreign Affairs minister Peter MacKay will take any action on Omar Khadr's file any time soon since he's still battling with members of the Khadr family in Canada but it's imperative that he be consistently reminded of his duty to Mr Khadr as a Canadian citizen in foreign custody.

You can contact MacKay in Ottawa here, or via his constituency offices. His e-mail address is: mackap1@parl.gc.ca

Demand real justice for Omar Khadr - not quasi justice cloaked in secrecy and abuse.