Blame Conservatives for Omar Khadr payout

We Canadians have to pay $10.5 million to Omar Khadr, but let’s ask the question of why, instead of getting in a fuss about it now.

Khadr was a child of 15 at the time he was injured in combat and became a prisoner of war. Under law, Khadr was a child soldier — his childhood was ripped away from him and he was brainwashed into fighting in an adult war over religious ideology. As Canadians we stand up to this kind of abuse, we protect children whenever we have the opportunity.

In the case of Khadr, we did not protect the child. In fact, our government was complicit in allowing a foreign government to take the child soldier to a prison in Cuba. We all knew torture was occurring in this prison; a concurrent court case deemed the abuses there to be illegal torture. Khadr was kept behind bars being tortured for years.

During Khadr’s capture, he was questioned under duress by Canadian officials. This was all proven in the Supreme Court of Canada not once but three times. Over the decade of his capture there were many advocacy groups fighting for his release around the globe. The government of the day under Stephen Harper would not ask the U.S. government to release the Canadian citizen. In fact, when Khadr was released from Guantanamo he was taken to a Canadian penitentiary to spend more time behind bars.

Jason Kenney, a former MP under Harper and now leader of the Conservative Party of Alberta, has recently said teens cannot join certain school clubs without their parents being notified. Yet at the time, he fought tooth-and-nail to keep a 15-year-old boy behind bars due to war crimes.

For a party that speaks daily on Canadian values I’m not sure it knows much about Canadian values.

Cory Szczepanski Sedley, Sask.