Khadr eligible for parole board hearing
Omar Khadr will go before the National Parole Board even after he is transferred to a provincial jail, lawyer Nate Whitling confirmed Wednesday.
Alberta’s court of appeal decision this week determined that Khadr is serving a youth sentence for the five crimes set out in a 2010 plea bargain made before a controversial U.S. military commission in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
As such, Khadr must be moved out of federal prison to a less harsh provincial jail, the appeal court said.
It’s not clear when Khadr will apply for a parole hearing, though he is technically eligible to apply for a hearing, having served a third of his sentence, Whitling said.
He will have a better chance of getting parole if he is transferred to a minimum security jail, a possibility later this year, Whitling said.
He is currently in the Bowden medium security institution after spending almost a year in Edmonton’s maximum security prison.
Khadr may have one other possible avenue for release, Whitling added.
The Youth Justice Act allows for an annual review by a judge and if a prisoner meets certain criteria, he could be released, said Whitling.
But it’s most likely the federal government would oppose that move, he added.
Khadr pleaded guilty to five crimes committed when he was 15, including murder for killing a U.S. soldier in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002.
It’s “still up in the air” exactly when Khadr, 27, will be transferred to a provincial jail, Whitling added.
The federal government immediately asked for a stay of the appeal court decision until the case can be heard at the Supreme Court. No date has been set for a stay hearing at Alberta’s appeal court.
Federal Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney says a youth sentence is not appropriate for a convicted terrorist.
Whitling also noted that Khadr’s habeas corpus application to the Alberta courts — which argued his detention in federal prison is illegal — would have come as no surprise to the federal government.
Whitling and lawyer Dennis Edney had raised that issue with the federal authorities at the time they applied for Khadr’s transfer to Canada in the spring of 2011.
They went so far as to sent paperwork to provincial corrections in Ontario and Alberta, as well as the federal government.
The federal government transferred Khadr from Cuba to Millhaven penitentiary in Ontario on Sept. 29, 2012.
The U.S. Military Commission Act makes no distinction between adult and youth prisoners at these trials, so the commission did not label Khadr’s eight-year sentence was a youth or adult sentence, the judgment noted.
But under Canadian law, it can only be deemed a youth sentence, given adult sentences for murder are much longer, said the Alberta appeal court justices.