Court to review Khadr media ban
Motion filed by the Star argues the public has the right to hear from inmate
A federal court is reviewing the constitutionality of Correctional Service Canada’s refusal to grant the media access to former Guantanamo Bay inmate Omar Khadr.
On Monday, the court will hear a challenge launched by the Star, the CBC and White Pine Pictures that argues denying interviews with Khadr amounts to a constitutional breach of the public’s right to know.
The proceeding follows two years of rejected attempts to speak with Khadr, despite the 28-year-old’s willingness to go on the record about his experiences.
Sukanya Pillay, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said the public should be able to hear him interviewed.
“This case has made headlines and for years we’ve heard one side of the story, we’ve heard the government’s description of events, and I think the public has an interest and a right to hear from Omar Khadr directly,” she told the Star.
Khadr was transferred from Guantanamo to Canada in 2012 and is currently serving the remainder of an eight-year sentence. He is applying for bail next month and will have a parole hearing this summer. Since January 2013, repeated requests to speak with him at the various facilities where he has been held have been denied.
Last March, Star reporter Michelle Shephard requested an on-camera interview with Khadr at Bowden Institution, the medium-security prison in Innisfail, Alta., where he is currently being held. The interview would appear in the Star and a CBC documentary Shephard is co-directing with filmmaker Patrick Reed. The facility’s warden rejected the request “given the disruption to the functioning of the operational unit” and the potential to jeopardize security, according to an affidavit. Khadr has been visited at the prison by members of the public on numerous occasions.
A year earlier, while Khadr was incarcerated at Ontario’s Millhaven Institution, in Bath, Ont., a warden approved a Canadian Press interview request, but that decision was quickly overturned by the office of Vic Toews, then-public safety minister.
Corrections media requests are assessed in accordance with a set of policies known as the Commissioner’s Directive.
The Star’s motion seeks an order allowing the media access to Khadr at Bowden Institution as well as a declaration that refusing the media access to Khadr is a breach of the public’s right to know under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
It has received support from free speech advocates and other media outlets, including the New York Times, which in an editorial last summer opined: “The Canadian government should allow the interview and let Mr. Khadr, now an adult, share his perspective on his ordeal. The public has been kept waiting long enough.”
Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 15, following a firefight with U.S. and Afghan forces. In 2010, he pleaded guilty to five war crimes, including murder in the death of U.S. soldier Christopher Speer, who was killed in the firefight. He has since said he only took the plea deal to be released from Guantanamo.