Welcome home, Omar Khadr!

Nowadays, welcomed relief comes down to the transferring of a prisoner from one gulag run by a racist society, to another gulag run by a racist society.

This stuff makes me sick. The only "guilty party" on the other side here was Khadr's late dad, for dragging his kid into serving as a child soldier. And the many, many guilty on the US/Canadian etc side who have tortured and abused this boy/young man for over a decade.

Unfortunately, Unionist, I don't think justice can ever be done in this case, even if Omar Khadr were to get full compensation. Imagine growing up in that hell-hole? Not only jailed and beaten, but denied the educational opportunities even Karla Homolka had here, in jail.

Even if he had been "guilty", which is an absurdity in battle unless one could prove war crimes, he would never have received such a sentence as an underaged offender.

Vic Toews continues to demonize Khadr - totally inappropriate from his office.

No, I think Vic Toews doesn't have a concept of "child" in his cognitive framework. That's why it was OK for him to [beep] his family's underage baby sitter.  Everybody (except perhaps his own kids) is an "adult."

Or of course, it may be simply "one rule for me, another for thee."

The guy is such a scumbag I'm surprised even Harper keeps him on.

 

 

Even under the kangaroo court system the US employed at Guantanamo, the original military judge threw out the case in June 2007 because Omar was an 'enemy combatant,' and the military commissions have jurisdiction only over 'unlawful enemy combatants'." However, this was overturned in September 2007: "A three-member appeal panel rules that the decision was in error and reinstates the charges against Khadr. Khadr's lawyers later filed an appeal, seeking to stop the U.S. military case against their client. A judge ordered in October that Khadr's trial proceed." (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/09/30/omar-khadr-timeline.html) Even some of the people involved in Guantanamo recognized that their own system was wrong.

Of course, there should have been no trial to begin with since by international law, Omar was a child soldier and was a combatant fighting armed soldiers, rather than a terrorist attacking civilians to say nothing of the fact that the vast majority of children trapped into his situation by his father would have done the same thing.

 

Granted bail:

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/04/24/alberta-judge-grants-omar-khadr-bail.html

Conservatives appealing.

 

I, personally think this is a good thing.

Canadians (and Americans) should rightfully agree that to whatever degree he was any kind of soldier, he was a child soldier, and we generally don't hold minors responsible for having been conscripted.

On the other hand, I also seem to recall that progressives cheerfully labelled former Pope Benedict a Nazi on the basis of having similarly been conscripted into the Nazi Youth -- against his and his family's beliefs, one year younger than Khadr, and according to mandatory state policy -- and held him responsible for his "choice" 70 years later.

How many people was he accused of killing?

But really, is that the point?

Khadr was a child soldier ONLY because he was imprisoned??  What does that have to do with recognizing that he was 15 at the time?

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More to do with his family Magoo. And the fact he was a child aside, and that there were no witnesses, it was not a real court at all, but a military tribunal, and remembering interviews with his lawyer, a rigged one at that.

Okay, but wasn't the point all along that he was a child when it all happened, and basically a child soldier at that?

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but given the fact he was one of the most powerful people in the world, the comparison is a bit off.

I don't follow.  So he grew up to lead the Catholic church some 60 years later.  Does that mean he was a Nazi?

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Yes pretty much everyone who was in the Reich at that time had to fall in line or be outlaw, but the process against Khadr is on a completely different scale. No one imprisoned the pope or subjected him to torture.

Agreed.  But is THAT what means Benedict was a Nazi??

My point was not that Khadr shouldn't be free, nor that somehow Ratzinger suffered as much or worse.

My point was that both of them were under 16 when they were pressed to do something they didn't want to do.  I'm curious why Benedict was held responsible for what was forced on him at 14 if Khadr shouldn't be held responsible for what was forced on him at 15.  See what I'm asking?

 

Is it actually useful to debate with Magoo about that bastard Ratzinger - whom the world will remember in infamy, not for what he did as a minor, but what he and his brethren did to minors - and women - and LGBTQ folks - and anyone who didn't fit their diabolical vision of humanity? Is there something about "baiting" and "provocation" that escapes us here?

As for Omar Khadr being a "child soldier", I call bullshit. That's a perverse way of saying that had he been 3 years older, then he would have gotten what he deserved. It's a perverse way of saying that all those adults in Guantanamo got what they deserved.

Since when did throwing a grenade against a member of an invading occupying force become a crime? The real criminals - the U.S. and Canadians and their allies - have never been apprehended, never been charged, let alone tortured, held unlawfully.

Khadr should be forgiven for fighting on the side of the Afghan people, because he was just a "child". I think I'll call bullshit yet again.

 

 

 

It is an extremely important argument in legal terms, as this was a miscarriage of justice.

Sure, it is also the judiciary defending imperialist war, but that is a whole other line of argument.

I encountered some relevant information in a recent book: "Murder at Camp Delta" by Joseph Hickman (ex-Sergeant U.S. Army), Simon & Schuster, 2015.

While stationed as a guard at Guantanamo, Hickman found an installation consisting of six "trailer-type" buildings, which was not on the maps he had been shown (of areas his unit was supposed to guard). He called this "Camp No." He checked out the installation surreptitiously several times. On one occasion he heard screaming coming from it.

On June 9, 2006, Hickman saw a white van take three prisoners one by one from the cell blocks to an unknown destination in the direction of Camp No. At 11:30 PM a white van from an unknown place delivered three dead prisoners to the medical clinic. Ir was claimed that they had committed suicide. Hickman read reports on them and concluded that it was impossible for the prisoners to have comiitted suicide in the way claimed.

Hickman reported "I found a study compiling statistics released by the U.S. government that said fewer than 5 per cent of the men taken at Guantanamo had been captured by U.S. troops. The other 95 per cent had been handed over by Afghan warlords, bounty hunters, or foreign dictatorships in countries like Yemen.``

Hickman found that prisoners entering Guantanamo were normally administered large doses of the antimalarial drug mefloquine. The standard 250 mg. therapeutic dose of mefloquine risks producing `hallucinations or psychosis.`` The dose given to prisoners was 1250 mg. with the effect lasting upwards of one month (half-life 40 days). Prisoners were routinely held in isolation for 30 days without bedding and subjected to sensory deprivation. 

Only prisoners were given mefloquine or any antimalarial on entering Guantanamo.

Hickman concluded that the major purpose of the prison at Guantanamo was not the extraction of information from the prisoners (especially as most of them were low-grade prisoners unlikely to have any valuable information) but the development of ``advanced`` interrogation techniques and the training of interrogators for future use in the ``war on terror.``

The above should indicate what value should be placed on Omar Khadr`s supposed `confession.``

 

And he was only 15, as well as having been so badly wounded that he couldn't have possibly thrown a grenade. Not to mention the fact that it is very odd to condemn someone involved in combat (or at least dragged there by dad) for a battlefield death of another combattant.

This is utterly vile. Khadr is behaving as a model citizen.

Unionist, on Sept. 29, 2012 wrote:

One day, justice will be done. Don't know when.

Still waiting.

 

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And the sovereignty side to it. Foreign troups invading on his sovereign soil.

He was born in Toronto.

WWWTT wrote:

Many Canadian  laws in general were made under falsehoods perpetuated by the US and imperialism in general. 

Now I get the impression from this judge that denied bail (from NDPP’s link above) that she is being reasonable and realistic. And I’m sure a lot of people will forget the facts that got Canada entwined into perpetuating and unleashing a nightmare and near a dozen countries in the Middle East Asia and North Africa. 

I don’t think anyone else here may feel the same way I do, but I’ll say it. I see this judge as an insignificant mindless pawn only serving their masters wishes

Judges work within law, guidlines and jurisprudence -- the judge is not likely mindless but they do nto have absolute control and the emphasis is supposed to be public safety.

The problem here is the original judgment more than the limited choices a judge has with parole conditions. They are obliged to consider and not remake the judgement and to apply the concerns of the original sentence in their decisions.

Paladin1 wrote:

Misfit wrote:

 I wonder how many Canadian 15 year olds would try to fight back if foreigners tried to invade Canada.

None. They would either have their noses burried in cell phones and not notice or be having panic attacks when the internet stops working.

 

We need to teach college age "kids' how to be adults, 15 year olds? Big pass.

That's a charitable take. You seem to suggest Canadian kids wouldn't fight back mostly due to a lack of awareness.

I would argue that the institutionalized self-loathing has reached the point where most kids would celebrate the invaders.

Sounds like babble has entered the curmudgeon phase of its existence. When do we start shouting people off of our lawns?

Timebandit wrote:

Sounds like babble has entered the curmudgeon phase of its existence. When do we start shouting people off of our lawns?

So far, the only shitty comment I've seen about young people is the one by that pro-gun fetishist troll upthread. Please let's not one asshole comment divert important conversations, let alone use it to characterize babble as a whole.