Khadr fights back at U.S. widow’s efforts to go after his assets
The widow of an American soldier killed in Afghanistan has failed to show there’s a real risk former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr is hiding his money as a way to avoid paying people he might owe, new court filings show. In urging Ontario Superior Court to dismiss a request for an injunction against Khadr, his lawyer argues Tabitha Speer and another former American soldier have not shown a strong case to back their demand for an urgent freeze on any money paid him by the federal government. “The scant evidence offered in support of this pleading consists of double and triple hearsay statements drawn from media reports and Wikipedia,” lawyer Nate Whitling writes in his factum ahead of Thursday’s court hearing. “The hearsay now relied upon by the applicants is so vague and unreliable as to be of zero probative value.” Speer, the widow of Sgt. Chris Speer, and Layne Morris, who was blinded in the 2002 firefight in which American forces captured the badly wounded 15-year-old Khadr, won a default US$134.1-million wrongful-death judgment against Khadr two years ago in Utah. They are now trying to have the judgment enforced in Canada and want to go after Khadr’s assets, including the widely reported $10.5 million sources have said the federal government paid him to settle his breach-of-rights suit against Ottawa. Relying on newspaper stories is always a dangerous legal proposition, especially given that the courts have no way of assessing the credibility of the reports the applicants are citing in their materials, Whitling states in his factum.