By Ray Rivers

July 7th, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

They called him an enemy combatant, a bastardized term for ‘prisoner of war’ invented by the Bush (II) administration to rationalize bypassing the established rules of war, the Geneva Convention. This is the global superpower which claims to hold the moral high ground, yet refuses to sign on to the International Court of Justice. So it should be unsurprising that it would make up its own rules and embrace dishonoured practices like torture or unlimited confinement.

Should anybody feel sorry for Canadian-born Omar Khadr?

Omar Khadr as a boy

His father, widely accused of being a terrorist and confident of al Qaeda leader bin Laden, had taken him to that troubled land of Afghanistan when Omar was barely a teen. But the fifteen year old Omar had been working at an Afghan militia compound, video-taped assembling land mines – the kind of IEDs which may have ended up killing Canadian soldiers.

The Americans invaded the compound with a hundred soldiers using high explosives, helicopters and planes, and killed the four or five fighters who had been protecting the premises. In the fracas Omar Khadr was shot a number of times in the back or chest, and something happened to his eye. But he managed to hurl a grenade, likely in an act of self-defence, which is believed to have exploded killing one American soldier and wounding another.

Of course there is no such thing as self-defence if one is an enemy combatant. So they hauled Khadr off to the extraordinary prison and torture chamber that been constructed at Guantanamo naval base (Gitmo) in occupied Cuba. And he was held there for about a decade before facing a military court and confessing under duress to his ‘crime’. Once convicted he was allowed, by our Supreme Court, to return and serve his time in Canada.

Omar Khadr has said he wants to prove to Canadians: that I’m a good person.”

Back here he appealed to the courts and won a number of judgements, about being a juvenile when imprisoned; about the complicity of three subsequent Canadian governments – Chretien, Martin and Harper – in his imprisonment and interrogation; and that his rights under the Charter as a Canadian had been denied. Out on bail Omar Khadr had sued the Canadian government and its taxpayers for millions of dollars as compensation for the injustice our leaders allowed to happen on their watch.

Among other things, Canada never requested, in fact refused to allow, that he be re-repatriated to face justice here, instead of being held at Gitmo. This is in contrast to what British and Australian governments had done with their citizens, captured by the Yanks and accused of being enemy combatants.

So the Justice Department is giving him an apology and 10.5 million dollars, something that has enraged most Canadians who will likely never ever see a million dollars in any one place, let alone ten and a half.

I have followed this case for a number of years and essentially concur with Canada’s highest court that he had been treated unfairly and that his rights as a Canadian had been denied him. I think he is entitled to an apology for that. He was a juvenile at the time of his arrest and should have been treated appropriately. And his human rights were violated as he was subjected to advanced interrogation, aka torture. It was Omar’s father who led him to jihadism and terrorism. How much should the son pay for the sins the father?

On the other hand Omar was in a bad place; he was involved with people linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban; he had been doing a bad thing, making war materials to be used against allied forces, including our own; and he did fight back likely killing and wounding the soldiers as charged. For that he is facing a US judgement against him by the families of the US servicemen injured/killed for over $130 million in damages. Realizing they’ll never likely see that money, the American families have been trying to block the payment being made to Khadr by our government.

What’s with the money? Shouldn’t a legal claim for monetary compensation be justified by some kind of demonstration of financial damage or loss? How likely is it that the American soldier Omar presumably killed would be worth $130 million (US) to anyone but his wife – to whom he’d be priceless? And did Omar lose out earning $10.5 million while in a US rather than Canadian prison? Or had he been released early by a Canadian court, would he have earned that amount of money when his only known vocation was assembling land mines?

Of course he could have become a child pop star or hockey player, but that would have been difficult to do from prison. Still, Khadr had to organize his own legal defence in both the US and Canada, because his home country had written him off. For that he is entitled to compensation for legal costs – but I would hope his solicitors are not charging him more than ten million dollars.

Some politicians are comparing the $10.5 million to the few hundred thousand that is awarded to injured and disabled Canadian veterans of war. Such seemingly unfair treatment will not be easily forgotten as we approach the next federal election, something opposition leader Sheer is already warning us. Should we be rewarding the guy who made the kind of bombs which maimed and killed Canadian soldiers?

The government may argue that it minimized our financial risk by settling out of court rather than losing another case to Omar, who had been demanding twice as much. But at least a legal decision would be easier to accept than our government setting such an important precedent, voluntarily paying off an ex-con, still on bail, and former terrorist – child though he was.

Ray Rivers writes weekly on both federal and provincial politics, applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was a candidate for provincial office in Burlington in 1995.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.     Tweet @rayzrivers

Background links:

Enemy Combatant –   A Political Albatross –   It’s Justified –

US Court Judgement –   Blocking Canadian Compensation –

Juvenile Issue –   Supreme Court Decision –