Political cowardice is behind Khadr award
Chretien, Martin and, even Harper, had a choice, but decided not to act
Political cowardice. Those two words sum up how Canadian taxpayers got stuck turning Omar Khadr into a multimillionaire.
The federal Liberal government has confirmed that Khadr received an apology and $10.5 million tax-free Thursday in a settlement of his $20-million lawsuit against the Canadian federal government.
Political foes are trying to make Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wear the entire political mess caused by the payout and apology to the former Guantanamo Bay inmate. While it’s true that Trudeau should have fought this settlement to the end, he deserves little of the culpability. Most of the blame should fall on former Liberal prime ministers Jean Chretien and Paul Martin and to a lesser extent, former Conservative PM Stephen Harper.
Omar Khadr was just 15 and under the tutelage of his Western-hating “al- Qaeda family” (as dubbed by one of his brothers) when he allegedly threw a grenade during a July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan that killed U.S. combat medic, Sgt. Christopher Speer, and blinded another soldier in one eye. Khadr was badly injured himself but his life was saved by the very people he presumably tried to kill.
Jean Chretien’s Liberal government did not intervene when Khadr was jailed at Guantanamo, where torture occurred. In Canada, people under the age of 18 cannot be tried as adults unless a separate court process determines that is warranted. It’s possible Khadr would have been tried as an adult had he been brought back to Canada. Maybe Chretien was afraid. It had been revealed shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that during a trade mission to Pakistan in 1996, Chretien petitioned then-prime minister Benazir Bhutto on behalf of Ahmed Said Khadr, Omar’s Egyptian-born father, who was suspected of being a major player in the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. Ahmed Khadr — a known associate of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden — was released shortly after Chretien’s intervention. He repaid Canada for his freedom by eventually moving his family to Afghanistan and enrolling his sons — including 11-year-old Omar — into terrorist training camps.
While other Western democracies, such as Australia and the U.K., obtained the return of their adult citizens from Guantanamo, Chretien did not try to have Khadr returned. Neither did Martin, who was in power from December 2003 to February 2006 when Khadr was still a teen. They just kept on kicking that political stink bomb down the road. In 2010, when Harper was PM, Khadr pleaded guilty to charges of murder in violation of the rules of war and was sentenced to another eight years, but said later that he only pleaded guilty as a way to get out of Guantanamo.
The Supreme Court of Canada criticized the federal government for contributing to Khadr’s detention at Guantanamo and ruled that Khadr’s treatment “offends the most basic Canadian stan- dards about the treatment of detained youth suspects … and Canada’s participation in the illegal process in place at Guantanamo Bay clearly violated Canada’s binding international obligations.”
Chretien’s government should have had Khadr returned to Canada and tried him either as a youth or an adult. It is owing primarily to Chretien’s and then Martin’s cowardice that Khadr is now fabulously wealthy, while our dismembered veterans get less than $400,000 for their injuries. Trudeau should have fought this court case to the end to lessen the amount paid to Khadr.
Nevertheless, Canada is a country of laws dating back to the Magna Carta. One of the things we celebrated on Canada’s 150th birthday just last week is that we are governed by the rule of law, not arbitrary measures doled out at the whim of despots.
To avoid such a debacle again, an automatic process not reliant on the cowardly inclinations of vote-seeking politicians should be established to deal with Canadian prisoners of war. Had that happened, Khadr would not have a case to get a single dollar or an apology.