Khadr deal ‘set the bar,’ says fellow ex-detainee

TORONTO • A British man compensated by the U.K. government for his torture and years of detention at Guantanamo Bay expressed dismay on Tuesday at the public and political furor in Canada over Ottawa’s settlement with Omar Khadr.

Speaking from his home in Birmingham in the U.K., Moazzam Begg said Canadians instead should be proud of the federal government for the payment and apology to Khadr for breaching his rights.

“The nation shouldn’t be upset about issuing an apology for something that’s right,” Begg told The Canadian Press. “If people are getting upset about that, I think they need to revisit what their morals and values are about.”

Begg is one of 16 former Guantanamo detainees who settled lawsuits against the British government in 2010. The deal aroused little of the anger seen in Canada over the Khadr deal, announced last week, which sources said was worth $10.5 million.

For one thing, Begg said, Khadr’s payment was far in excess of anything the Britons received — reportedly a total of about $30 million. For another, the allegations that he killed an American soldier in Afghanistan were more serious.

Nevertheless, he said, Canada has led the way globally in how it has settled with Khadr and previously with such others as Maher Arar, who was sent by the Americans to torture in Syria.

“Canada has set the bar,” Begg said. “It isn’t about the amounts, though the amounts ... are far, far greater. It’s about the apology.”

Begg was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002, and handed over to U.S forces. They imprisoned him at Bagram in Afghanistan, where a wounded 15-year-old Khadr was taken after U.S. soldiers captured him in July of that year.

Like Khadr, Begg, then 33, was taken to Guantanamo Bay. He spent about three years there before being returned to the U.K., where he and the others embarked on a legal quest to expose British complicity in their abuse and seek compensation.