Khadr tries newway to lift bail restrictions
TORONTO• Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr is asking Alberta youth court to order his release and declare his eightyear sentence to have expired. In a separate application before Federal Court, Khadr is attempting to force national parole authorities to grant him a hearing at which he would argue for release. The overriding idea, Khadr’s Edmonton-based lawyer said in an interview Tuesday, is to ensure an end point to the eight-year sentence the commission imposed on him in 2010. Had Khadr remained in custody, his sentence would have expired in October. However, the clock stopped ticking when an Alberta judge freed him on bail in May 2015 pending his appeal of his military commission conviction for war crimes — a years-long process that still has no end in sight.
“The bail order does interrupt the ticking of the clock but practically speaking, the guy has served his sentence now,” lawyer Nate Whitling said from Edmonton. “The youth court judge does have the authority to just simply terminate the sentence and say, ‘It’s now over’.”
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled the punishment handed Khadr for acts committed in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old to be a youth sentence. His application, to be heard this month, asks a youth judge to release him under supervision for a single day, then declare his sentence served. One hurdle Khadr must overcome is proving the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench has jurisdiction because the international treaty under which he was transferred to Canada from Gitmo could be interpreted as precluding such a review. If that view prevails, his application asks the judge to declare that part of the treaty unconstitutional.
In a separate application, Khadr wants the Federal Court to order the Parole Board of Canada to grant him a hearing.
“As with everything in Omar’s case, there’s no precedent,” Whitling said. A Justice Department lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Since his release in 2015, Khadr has lived in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alta. While the courts have eased some of his bail conditions, he still can’t hold a Canadian passport or have unsupervised communication with his sister Zaynab. “He’s got these conditions on him and essentially right now, they’re going to be there indefinitely,” Whitling said. “We would like to get Omar’s clock ticking again. We want this sentence to actually start ticking, so it will expire.” Khadr was sent to the U.S. military facility in Cuba just months after he was captured as a wounded 15-year-old in Afghanistan in July 2002. He pleaded guilty to throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier.
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled Canada violated his rights while he was a U.S. captive, leading the government to compensate him $10.5 million in 2017.