Testament to our democracy
It’s fitting, in a way, that Omar Khadr’s first taste of freedom in 13 years might come the same day Albertans head to the polls. Khadr has spent most of his remembered life behind bars, far from election campaigns, but not far enough from political interference.
He’ll be inside a city courtroom next Tuesday to discuss conditions of his release. Who he is will not change that day, but where he’ll be when the polls close just might.
Last week, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice June Ross ruled in Edmonton that Khadr should be released on bail while he appeals his contentious 2010 guilty plea to war crimes, which came with an eight-year sentence via the military commission in Guantanamo Bay.
He has “a strong basis” for winning that appeal, Ross said. Others have successfully challenged Guantanamo convictions as the military laws were written after the alleged crimes.
Lawyer Dennis Edney hopes to take in the 28-year-old next Tuesday, to live at his west Edmonton home and find a semblance of normal life while he tries to further his education.
The federal government, ever insistent that the Toronto-born Khadr is a dangerous, unrepentant terrorist, hopes to stay Ross’s decision, shutting Khadr behind bars until his U.S. appeal is heard.
Whatever your think of Khadr, you shouldn’t be swayed by the federal reaction, which is to oppose bail. As Ross pointed out, bail is a legal right protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Alberta’s courts have merely upheld the rule of law, a job as crucial to our democracy as the local polling station.
Since his repatriation to Canada in 2013, Khadr has moved from maximum-security classification to medium and, last week, to minimum security.
By all accounts, he has been a model prisoner, a man who has built relationships with university professors and community leaders, many of whom have helped him develop ideas for a life outside Bowden Institution.
Ross says Khadr is unlikely to reoffend, that keeping him inside is not in the interest of public safety. She is right.
The world has changed since that day in July 2002, when a nearly-blinded teen was found in rubble in Afghanistan, following a bloody fight that killed U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer.
Terrorism and extremism are very real. Last week, the Conservatives committed $360 million to combat in Syria and Iraq for the next 12 months. In January, CBC broke the news that a trio of Edmonton cousins had died after joining ISIL, with news in March that a fourth Edmontonian had reportedly joined. Weeks later, police intercepted a teen in Beaumont before he could fly away.
That doesn’t mean we should accept the federal government’s use of Khadr as a proxy for our worst fears. He was not an ISIL recruit, but a boy taken to Afghanistan by his family.
We can’t keep him behind bars forever. In October 2016, having served two-thirds of his sentence, he will be eligible for statutory release.
Khadr has already spent more years behind bars, under harsher conditions, than many Canadian teens convicted of murder ever would.
Should he be released on Tuesday, it would be his first chance to exercise a modicum of his inevitable freedom. In coming months, he’ll need to decide what he intends to contribute to Canada in general and Edmonton in particular.
The legal battle might not be over yet. But the spirit of Ross’s decision is an eminently hopeful sign of the judicial independence Albertans expect — reason for all of us, perhaps even Khadr, to cast a ballot.