Albas’s government did nothing to stop the torture of a minor

Editor: Re: the Dan Albas MP report on Monday, headlined Khadr payment sparks outrage.

Omar Khadr was sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and did not go to trial until 2010.

In both 2004 and 2006 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the military commission established to prosecute the Guantanamo Bay detainees violated U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions.

In 2008, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled the regime providing for the detention and trial of Khadr at the time when CSIS interviewed him in 2003-04 constituted a clear violation of fundamental human rights protected by international law.

As a result of that decision, Khadr’s lawyers applied to the federal court for the Canadian Conservative government to request his repatriation.

They won that case, but the government appealed to the Supreme Court.

In the 2010 unanimous decision, the Supreme Court found that Canadian officials could be held liable for breaching Khadr’s Charter rights by interrogating him in the face of an illegal detention.

The CSIS and Department of Foreign Affairs interviews breached Khadr’s section 7 rights.

Canada was complicit in Khadr’s deprivation of liberty and security of the person, the court ruled, declaring that Khadr’s rights have been violated, but allowing the government to decide how to remedy that breach.

The Khadr lawsuit started over a decade ago. The main claim in the $20-million civil suit is that Canadian officials violated his rights when they interrogated him, knowing he was a minor, without legal representation and had been subjected to torture.

The case had nothing to do with the firefight in 2002.

Notwithstanding that the Supreme Courts in both the U.S. and Canada declaring rights had been violated, Albas’s Conservative government continually fought against a Canadian.

At the July press announcement, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale stated that the government had already spent over $5 million on court costs. They also did not expect to win the civil suit.

I am ashamed of the way the Conservative government treated a Canadian minor.

David Perron, West Kelowna