Transfer Khadr to jail from prison: lawyer
Omar Khadr’s lawyer will go to court next month asking that his client be transferred from the maximum-security Edmonton Institution to a provincial jail because Khadr was a teenager when his crimes were committed.
Under the International Transfer of Offenders Act (ITOA) — which governed Khadr’s transfer to Canada from the notorious U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — a Canadian between the ages of 12 and 17 is considered a juvenile if he receives a juvenile sentence, Dennis Edney argues in his brief.
The Toronto-born Khadr was 15 when the offences occurred in Afghanistan in 2002.
As part of a plea bargain, Khadr pleaded guilty in October 2010 to the murder of a U.S. soldier, attempted murder, conspiracy, providing material support to terrorism and spying.
Khadr received a sentence of eight years in the deal. That length of sentence is considered a juvenile sentence under Canadian youth justice law for murder, says Edney.
“Had those offences been committed in Canada, an eight-year sentence could only have been imposed as a youth sentence,” Edney said in documents filed in an Edmonton court Tuesday. Therefore, Khadr should not be held as an adult in federal prison.
“They don’t have lawful authority to hold him in a maximum institution under section 20 of the ITOA,” he added in an interview.
But the federal government vowed to fight any effort to reduce Khadr’s punishment.
“Omar Khadr pleaded guilty to very serious crimes,” Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said in a release.
“The government of Canada will vigorously defend against any court action to lessen his punishment for these crimes.”
Edney will make a habeas corpus application in Court of Queen’s Bench requiring the government to justify its “illegal” detention of Khadr in a maximum-security institution. Habeas corpus is the fundamental, long-standing right of all prisoners to challenge their detention in open court. On Friday, he will seek a September court date for the hearing.
Khadr, who spent 10 years in Guantanamo, was sent to Ontario’s Millhaven Institution on Sept. 29, 2012, and eight months later was transferred to Edmonton after his life was threatened in Millhaven.
The federal government has not yet filed its case. But in a July 12 letter to Edney, Corrections Canada counsel Kanchana Fernando writes that Khadr’s eight years is meant to apply to each of the five crimes separately and be served consecutively, for a total of 40 years.
While eight years is a juvenile sentence for murder, Fernando argues there were five separate sentences of eight years apiece. Khadr is “deemed to be serving an adult sentence for the four sentences other than the murder conviction.”
Edney, who was part of the defence team at the Guantanamo sentencing hearing in 2010, dismissed that interpretation of the plea bargain as “factually incorrect” and “fiction.”
The U.S. military commission’s “convening authority” was clear that it was imposing a single eight-year sentence for all five crimes as part of the plea bargain, he said.
“The Crown’s position is incorrect in both fact and law,” Edney says in his brief.
Also, it “defies common sense” to have a prisoner simultaneously serving both
“The Crown’s position is incorrect in both fact and law.”
DENNIS EDNEY
adult and youth sentences, said Edney.
When Khadr agreed to the plea bargain, “nothing in the pre-trial agreement that suggested the agreed-upon maximum of eight years” would be served consecutively, the documents say.
Khadr, who turns 27 in September, will have spent almost half his life in jail, said Edney.
“This government needs to be made accountable for its mistreatment of Omar Khadr,” his lawyer said. “The abuse continues. It continues to lock him away as an adult instead of treating him as a youth.”
In October, Edmonton Institution warden Kelly Hartle will decide whether to keep Khadr under maximum-security classification or to reduce that to medium. In December, Khadr is eligible for a parole hearing.
Khadr continues his education under guidance from a group of professors, mostly with King’s University College.
In Guantanamo, Khadr was held for years without charges and subjected to intense sleep deprivation before he was interrogated by officials from the Canadian Security Intelligence Services. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled those officials violated Khadr’s rights.
U.S. President Barack Obama has said he wants to close the prison, which most Western countries consider a legal black hole. The U.S. military commissions are discredited in many countries, partly because they allow evidence obtained under torture.
Edney is also challenging Khadr’s conviction under the military commission, after U.S. courts threw out the conviction of two former Guantanamo prisoners.