Put every ISIL war criminal on trial

Canada can’t dodge dilemma of how to ensure war criminals face justice

“I dream about one day bringing all the militants to justice, not just the leaders like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi but all the guards and slave owners, every man who pulled a trigger and pushed my brothers’ bodies into their mass grave, every fighter who tried to brainwash young boys into hating their mothers for being Yazidi ... They should all be put on trial before the entire world, like the Nazi leaders after World War II, and not given the chance to hide.”

Those are the words of Nadia Murad, the 25-year-old Yazidi human rights activist who has harnessed her own suffering as the survivor of an Islamic State rape camp to the cause of focusing global attention on the atrocity of rape as a weapon of war. Only two weeks ago, Murad and the Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, a relentless advocate for rape victims, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Murad’s dream, if a nearunanimous motion of the House of Commons this week is to be taken seriously, is now shared by the Canadian Parliament. Her words were written verbatim into the motion brought before the House this week by Murad’s comrade Michelle Rempel, the Conservative critic for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, herself a fierce campaigner for Yazidi refugees, and Pierre Paul-Hus, Opposition critic for Public Safety.

Every ISIL rapist, génocidaire, propagandist and collaborator must be brought to justice, then. Further, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government must table a plan, within 45 days, “to immediately bring to justice anyone who has fought as an (ISIL) terrorist or participated in any terrorist activity, including those who are in Canada or have Canadian citizenship.”

It is due in no small part to the efforts of Stewart Bell, late of the National Post and now with Global News, that the House is even pondering the question of Canada’s seriousness in dealing with Canadians who have absconded to Iraq and Syria to join Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic state bedlamers and marauders.

In recent days, Bell’s reports from the region have caused considerable consternation about what to do, exactly, with at least a dozen Canadian ISIL riffraff, women and children who have been captured by Kurdish guerrillas who quite reasonably want to be rid of them. The ISIL fighters say they have grown rather weary with the jihad business, with all its head-chopping and raping and so on, and just want to come home and get on with their lives.

It is not so straightforward a matter as we all might like it to be, as Rempel conceded in her remarks supporting the motion. “Processes, both here in Canada and in the courts of international law, to bring perpetrators of atrocity crimes to justice, are slow and rarely work,” Rempel said. “Canada should lead immediate reforms to ensure justice is swift, both within our own domestic policy and abroad.”

The Conservatives propose quite a few measures. Dismantle the procedural obstacles in the way of Canadian courts’ access to evidence on suspected terrorists. Provide security agencies with adequate resources for the surveillance and monitoring of returned fighters. Place conditions on terrorist suspects, such as peace bonds and electronic ankle bracelets, and prohibit their access to social media.

The Conservatives also say the federal government might consider measures such as those proposed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford to make it more difficult for returned fighters to exploit “Canada’s generous social programs” in the course of their “reintegration.”

The motion itself doesn’t go into any of that, but there is cause to wonder whether the Liberals, whose MPs all voted in favour, are serious. The vote tally was 280-1, the Greens’ Elizabeth May being the sole dissenter. May told me she voted “no” because of its first clause, committing the government to “refrain from repeating the past mistakes of paying terrorists with taxpayers’ dollars or trying to reintegrate returning terrorists back into Canadian society.”

It isn’t a matter of objecting to the bit dismissing reintegration efforts, but the first bit, about “paying terrorists with taxpayers’ dollars,” May said. It is obviously a reference to the case of Omar Khadr, of the al-Qaida Khadrs, who was detained as a teen in Guantanamo Bay and last year won a $10.5-million settlement arising from Canadian officials’ involvement in the denial of his rights to due process. Nobody believes the Liberals have suddenly decided the Khadr payout was a mistake. So we shouldn’t believe the Liberals intend to take any of the motion seriously, May argues.

May has a point, but we will see. This week’s motion comes almost two years to the day since another motion, adopted unanimously, and also put forward by Rempel, committed the government to recognize the ISIL mass murders and enslavements of the Yazidi people as a genocide, and to commit to a program providing Yazidis with asylum in Canada within 120 days. It ended up taking quite a lot longer than that, and it took quite a lot of badgering from Rempel. Eventually, several hundred Yazidis found asylum in Canada.

Increasingly, as the “liberal world order” collapses around us, Canada confronts sometimes daunting decisions about the free rein the world’s war criminals, génocidaires and dictators have taken for themselves. Myanmar’s genocide in the case of the Rohingyas, China’s mass imprisonment of perhaps a million Uighurs, Bashar Assad’s crucifixion of the Syrian people, and even one-off events, such as the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi three weeks ago, in all likelihood on the order of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The usual, greasy way of responding to these crimes against humanity and brazen tramplings of human rights is to say, well, there’s not much we can do. We’re just Canada. Or we dodge the dilemmas with insufferably moronic questions such as: Who are we to impose our values? Or, we slither out of it with such excuses as, well, if we don’t sell arms to the Saudis, someone else will. Or we content ourselves with “speaking out” about human rights but only in such ways as do not interfere with the trade opportunities available in doing business with police states.

This week’s motion in the House of Commons cuts to the quick of all that. None of these excuses are available. If Canada cannot bring its own génocidaires to justice, we can never expect that any other country’s war criminals will ever be made accountable for their atrocities, either. Nadia Murad is quite correct. “They should all be put on trial before the entire world, like the Nazi leaders after World War II, and not given the chance to hide.”

Canada should lead immediate reforms to ensure justice is swift, both within our own domestic policy and abroad. MICHELLE REMPEL, Conservative critic