Khadr to marry human-rights activist
• Former Guantanamo Bay inmate Omar Khadr, out on bail in Edmonton since last year, is getting married.
Postmedia News has confirmed the 29-year-old former child soldier will marry Edmonton human-rights activist Muna Abougoush, a longtime supporter who wrote and visited Khadr in prison during his time in Canadian custody.
Facebook posts congratulating the couple have quickly spread online.
“I am so happy to think you will be sharing your future together after so many years of shared past,” reads one message.
Abougoush is one of several women who started an international campaign for Khadr’s freedom. She helped launch a website to keep his story in the news and later began corresponding with and visiting him behind bars.
Abougoush told the Toronto Star in 2013 that she was nervous before her first meeting with Khadr: “This case that everyone had been talking about for over a decade was about to become a real person.”
She told the same paper a few years later that Khadr was maintaining a positive outlook despite his challenges.
“Omar is very forwardlooking, concentrating on his future. He doesn’t hold grudges. He knows if he hangs on to the negativity of the past he can’t move forward,” she said in May, 2015.
Khadr was released on bail last year after spending more than a decade behind bars in both U.S. and Canadian custody, including eight years at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.
Since then he has been living in the west Edmonton home of his lawyer, Dennis Edney, as he studies to become an emergency medical responder.
On the Free Omar Khadr Now website, Abougoush wrote about an earlier court appearance, saying, “The rooms were packed with supporters wearing pins and holding signs and there wasn’t one person in opposition to Omar.
“He walked into the courtroom and all of the people were in shock and some cried and cried. He smiled at all of the people who were there.
“It was a long day in and out of the courtroom for hours. Every once and a while Omar would glance over and I would smile and make a face at him. He was so happy to see all these people just for him.
“At the end of the day he got up to leave the courtroom and everyone cheered for him and I really think it lifted his spirits. I think it was one of the best moments I have ever witnessed.”
The U.S. military captured a badly wounded Khadr after a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 years old. He was quickly sent to Guantanamo Bay, where he was tried for war crimes by a military court.
Khadr pleaded guilty in October 2010 to five war crimes, including the murder of a U.S. soldier, but later said he entered the plea only to escape the notorious prison.