Tory leader’s solution to Khadr case has no legal legs, experts say
Does Omar Khadr deserve $10.5 million?
Not according to Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, who said Friday the reported amount of the federal government’s settlement with the former Guantanamo Bay detainee was “a slap in the face” and insisted that simply bringing Khadr back to Canada was compensation enough.
Scheer’s argument could prove a winner with voters, but would it hold up in court?
In 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned a court order that Khadr should be repatriated but agreed that his charter rights had been violated.
That Supreme Court decision would lay the foundation for Khadr’s civil claim worth $20 million and which alleged complicity by Canadian officials in Khadr’s torture at Guantanamo.
On Friday the government announced a settlement in the case, reportedly worth $10.5 million.
Khadr spent 10 years in Guantanamo Bay before being released in Edmonton, where he now lives. But was his return to Canada remedy enough, as Scheer argued?
James Lockyer, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in social justice issues, said there’s “not a chance” the government could win the civil case by arguing that Khadr’s repatriation was a sufficient remedy.
The irony, Lockyer said, is if previous governments had lobbied for Khadr’s return from Guantanamo Bay from the beginning then the current government would have had a better argument in the civil case.
“Given our acquiescence in torture of Mr. Khadr, I’ve no doubt the damages would have been ... punitively high” if the case had gone to trial, said Lockyer.
It would have been technically possible for the government to go to trial and argue that repatriation was compensation enough but it’s hard to find an expert who thinks that’s a good strategy.
“Repatriating Khadr was minimally necessary only to finally end the prolonged rights infringement in the first place. Whether he was owed damages, and what amount, are completely separate questions,” said University of Waterloo political scientist Emmett Macfarlane.