We are all to blame for Omar Khadr’s mistreatment
The term “Kafkaesque” crossed the threshold into cliché years ago, but at times the word is sorely needed. For a situation to be Kafkaesque, it must be menacingly incomprehensible, with a lone individual thrown into a dangerous but confusing situation. Omar Khadr’s ordeal certainly fits that definition.
The trial of Omar Khadr — Omar K. in a Kafka work, or an “alien unprivileged enemy belligerent” in Guantanamo code — is a permanent stain on Canada’s record. Khadr was raised by a family with ties to Al Qaeda, trained to take up arms, accused of lobbing a grenade at a U.S. soldier at age 15, thrown into a secret prison without adequate legal assistance, beaten and tortured, forced to choose between an unjust plea deal and an unfair trial, until finally, one day 13 years later, he was released on bail.
There are at least 300,000 child soldiers currently serving in militaries and militias around the world. Under Article Four of the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, nonstate actors are prohibited from using anyone under the age of 18 for any purpose. Forced recruitment of minors in armed conflict is considered slavery by the International Labour Organization. What makes the fate of Khadr and other child soldiers especially tragic is the complete absence of choice. To fault Khadr for falling in with Al Qaeda as a boy is to fault him for being born to the wrong parents.
But suppose Khadr was fairly prosecuted, tried and convicted. Suppose he was given full access to both his attorneys and the evidence against him. Suppose the ordeal involved less Kafka and more Lady Justice. None of this happened, but assuming it did, that would still not exonerate the American and Canadian govern- ments. The first tortured him and the second served as an accomplice. A bag was placed over his head. He was confronted with barking dogs. “Several times,” Khadr wrote, “the soldiers tied my hands above my head to the door frame or chained them to the ceiling and made me stand like that for hours at a time.” He was sleep deprived, starved and threatened with rape.
Throughout this disturbing period, the Canadian government remained indifferent to Khadr’s nightmare. As happens on issues involving terrorism, this was a bipartisan Liberal-Conservative effort. The Liberal government did not attempt to repatriate Khadr, arguing that he had no right to consular access.
Under the Liberals’ watch, Canadian authorities interviewed Khadr and then turned over the intelligence to the Pentagon, wittingly participating in a process contrary to international law. Khadr has said that when he showed Canadian officials his torture scars, they called him a liar. The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that this Guantanamo complicity was illegal.
The Conservatives, meanwhile, went to extraordinary lengths in refusing to assist Khadr, interfering with the judicial process and classifying him as an adult offender — all on the Canadian taxpayers’ dime. When the Conservatives finally repatriated him, they did so not on principle, but because the U.S. government pressured them to. The Tories’ cruelty surplus is more revealing than their fiscal one.
But the blame for Khadr’s mistreatment rests ultimately with us, the Canadian public. It was a democratically elected government that assisted the torturers, and a repeatedly re-elected government that tried to keep him in the penal colony. To shift the moral blame to the people’s representatives is to absolve the Canadian public from its own complacency. The numbers back this up: According to polling done by Abacus Data, six out of 10 Canadians opposed Khadr’s return to Canada. So it was we, Canadians, who wanted him locked up in Guantanamo, and we, Canadians, who kept ourselves ignorant when the facts became uncomfortable. He was a brown-skinned child who helped Al Qaeda, therefore he was subhuman and not a real Canadian.
And when Khadr — shackled for over a decade, abused by his family, betrayed by his fellow citizens — spoke, what did he say? Was he bitter and unrepentant and monstrous, as described by the government? Khadr told a psychiatrist in New York that all he wanted was “a chance of life, a true life.” He said Sept. 11 was “a tragedy” and the “killing of innocents is tragic.” He said he wanted to one day become a doctor and get married. When asked what he missed most about his life, he said what any of us would say if we were in his position: “Being loved.”
A future generation will one day read about Khadr’s ordeal in history class, and by then, if Canada has learned anything from this, the official apology Khadr receives from a future government will be printed in bold in the textbook.
It was we, Canadians, who wanted Khadr locked up in Guantanamo and us who kept ourselves ignorant when the facts became uncomfortable