The Liberals and NDP failed on the Khadr file (Whitehorse Star July 10, 2017)

The Liberals and NDP failed on the Khadr file (Whitehorse Star July 10, 2017)

The Liberals' and NDP's withholding of exonerating, conclusive and sworn legal testimony (US Military Commissions Report OC-1 CITF) from the public feeds ammunition to the Conservatives.

The treatment of Khadr was a war crime under the Geneva and Child Soldier Conventions, and under Canadian law which adheres to international law, rendering Guantanamo rulings invalid. 

However, acts of resistance are first rate relevant in the story, such as by the courageous American military lawyer Bill C. Kuebler who had forced into the process the sworn legal eyewitness statement by US military personnel: Khadr did not kill Christopher Speer.

A crucial failure to get out in front of reintegrating the innocent Omar Khadr is bound to cost Liberals and NDP dearly in the 2019 federal election. 

These spineless Neo-liberals want to have it both ways with a belated settlement and weasel absolution from their collectively acquired legal responsibilities.

All the while they are still trying to get in on the islamophobic smearing of Khadr and Canada through assigning consistent and fact defying blame regarding US army medic Christopher Speer's death.

Author Thomas King with his observed "first rule of racism" perhaps best echoes the political correctness of united dog whistlers on the Hill: "Think it, but do not speak it out loud."

Quote from my coloumn in the Whitehorse Star Dec. 2, 2015:

-- Unfortunately, there is no indication yet from the Trudeau government that Canada will return to the world community of nations that follows the UN Child Soldier Conventions signed by Canada in 1949, 1977 and 2000.

Under the law, prosecution and punishment of child soldiers or combatants under 18, including the cover-up, facilitation or aiding thereof, is a war crime (no ifs and buts).

Justice and compensation for Omar Khadr, who was also psychologically tortured with attention to sadistic detail by Canada’s CSIS in Guantanamo (CBC video: https://goo.gl/8cTgn4 ), is overdue, and has to be the measure of that.

Aggravating injustice occurred on Feb. 4, 2008, when the U.S. Military Commissions, in Guantanamo, accidentally released and later suppressed eyewitness report OC-1 CITF of March 17, 2004.

It contains sworn, legal testimony by the U.S. army personnel who captured Khadr in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002, that Khadr, then 15, did not kill U.S. army medic Christopher Speer.

Some decent women and men stood up for the law and Khadr’s rights.

Among them were UN officials, RCMP Chief Supt. Mike Cabana, who resigned in protest from the RCMP anti-terrorism unit Project O Canada, the former senator and general Romeo Dallaire, Michelle Shepard from the Toronto Star, American military lawyer Bill C. Kuebler and Dennis Edney from Edmonton.

It is widely agreed that the Guantanamo concentration camp continues to be a first-rate recruiting tool transforming young Muslim women and men toward the extreme.

One way to put a little more distance between Canada and Guantanamo would be to avoid the usual decades-long foot-dragging for victim rehabilitation in the justice system and clear the air quickly for all Canadians and now upstanding, loyal citizen Khadr. -- End of quote.