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Canadian PM "The Only Guy Now In The World Who Seems To Believe In Guantanamo"

By blueness

President Obama having Thursday issued executive orders commanding the closure of the prison at Guantanamo "as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order," and suspending the facility's "military tribunals" for 120 days, Canadian politicians and pundits are becoming increasingly exasperated with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who persists in his years-long refusal to request repatriation of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who at age 15 was shot by American combatants in Afghanistan, tortured, imprisoned, and eventually charged with the "murder" of a US soldier, and whose show trial was shut down Thursday by Obama's orders.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said it is "preposterous" that Ottawa is defending the Guantanamo military tribunals even when the United States has stopped them.

"The only guy now in the world who seems to believe in Guantanamo and military tribunals is Stephen Harper," Mr. Rae said.

He noted that both major presidential candidates in the U.S. election promised to close Guantanamo Bay. Mr. Obama's order for a 120-day hiatus to review the military commissions shows it's not just about the detention centre, but still the government appears to have no plan, Mr. Rae said.

"They've been in denial for so long," he said. "It's like a Monty Python sketch: This is a dead tribunal."

Omar Khadr's story has been diaried on this site many times.

This recent piece from Our Alexa is a good place to start. Where we learn that following his capture in July 2002, Khadr, 15, was subjected to this sort of treatment:

At Bagram, he was repeatedly brought into interrogation rooms on stretchers, in great pain. Pain medication was withheld, apparently to induce cooperation. He was ordered to clean floors on his hands and knees while his wounds were still wet. When he could walk again, he was forced to stand for hours at a time with his hands tied above a door frame. Interrogators put a bag over his head and held him still while attack dogs leapt at his chest. Sometimes he was kept chained in an interrogation room for so long he urinated on himself.

And, once transferred to Guantanamo, this sort of treatment:

An hour or two later they came back, checked the tautness of his chains and pushed him over on his stomach. Transfixed in his bonds, Omar toppled like a figurine. Again they left. Many hours had passed since Omar had been taken from his cell. He urinated on himself and on the floor. The MPs returned, mocked him for a while and then poured pine-oil solvent all over his body. Without altering his chains, they began dragging him by his feet through the mixture of urine and pine oil. Because his body had been so tightened, the new motion racked it. The MPs swung him around and around, the piss and solvent washing up into his face. The idea was to use him as a human mop.

Khadr's defense to the charge that he caused the death of American combatant Christopher Speer has always been that Speer, in truth, was extinguished by "friendly fire." There is an American witness whose account buttresses that assertion.

A U.S. soldier reported that he accidentally stepped on Omar Khadr following a firefight in Afghanistan because Khadr was covered in rubble, casting doubt on whether the 15-year-old Canadian could have thrown the grenade that fatally wounded Delta Force soldier Christopher Speer.

Identified only as "Soldier # 2," it's expected he will testify that he "inadvertently stood on top of (Khadr) and thought he was standing on a 'trap door' because the ground did not seem solid," a motion submitted to the court states.

The soldier then "bent down to move the brush away to see what was beneath him and discovered that he was standing on a person; and that Mr. Khadr appeared to be 'acting dead,' " the motion continued.

Khadr's defence team told a military judge here Friday that this soldier's testimony will be key at trial because it proves the Toronto-born captive could not be guilty of the Pentagon's charge of "murder in violation of the laws of war" for Speer's death.

My defense has been a bit balder:

In my view, this case is bullshit, regardless of whether he tossed a grenade or not. The dead American soldier was part of an invading army that attacked Afghanistan. He was a legitimate military target of any citizen of that country, or any volunteer serving in defense of that country.

Once it became clear that Khadr had been severely tortured and abused while in American custody, and that BushCo would persist in prosecuting him in whatever sham show-trial proceedings it felt it could get away with, compassionate Canadians began clamoring for their government to bring Khadr back to his homeland.

This clamoring has been steadfastly ignored by Conservative PM Harper. Even as, in the very days before Obama's executive orders, the show trial targeting Khadr was shown to be proceeding  "at odds with reality."

Robert Fuller, a prosecution witness in the Pentagon's Guantanamo Bay case against Mr. Khadr, testified on Monday that Mr. Khadr, during a 2002 interrogation at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, identified a photo of Mr. [Maher] Arar and said he had seen him in a Kabul safe house run by an alleged terrorist. But defence lawyers yesterday produced a report written by Mr. Fuller in which he states that Mr. Khadr told him he saw Mr. Arar in Afghanistan in September or October of 2001.

The problem is, Mr. Arar was in Canada in October, 2001, as the Arar commission's findings clearly show. U.S. authorities also know he was in California the previous month.

Friday the Toronto Globe and Mail flatly stated that despite the fact that PM Harper too remains "at odds with reality,"

Omar Khadr is almost certain to be returned to Canada now that U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered Guantanamo Bay's prison camps shut down, politicians and experts say.

The Conservative government may also be forced to retreat from its long-held refusal to interfere in the detained Canadian's case, and instead be compelled to formally request he be returned.

More:

An expert said that Mr. Khadr is likely to land back in Canada, and that Mr. Obama will want to settle this "irritant" before he visits Mr. Harper in Ottawa in coming weeks.

"My guess is that they would probably want this off the books by summit time," said Fen Hampson, director of Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.

Two hours ago the Globe and Mail posted this piece:

President Barack Obama extended America's hand to the world last week, affirming his nation's commitment to returning to multilateralism and co-operation. He also spoke of "our common defence" and rejected "as false, the choice between our safety and our ideals." He declared, in a subtle rebuke of George Bush's anti-terrorism policies, that "our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint" . . . .

So, too, does Mr. Harper have the singular opportunity to advance Canada's national security and foreign policy interests, as well as the interests of justice, by seeking Mr. Khadr's immediate repatriation.

There can no longer be any serious doubt that Mr. Khadr's six-year detention in Guantanamo did not accord with either international law or the U.S Constitution. On three occasions, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected various aspects of the military tribunal's process. Our own Supreme Court ruled last year that the circumstances in which Mr. Khadr was being held in 2003, when Canadian officials interviewed him, violated international legal obligations to which Canada was bound . . . .

Mr. Khadr was a child when the relevant events occurred. He has already spent six years in prison, in conditions far worse than he would have experienced in a domestic criminal detention facility, and for a longer period of time. Justice demands that Canada abide by its international commitments and reassert its persuasive authority on the world stage.

Closing Guantanamo is the right thing to do. Mr. Obama has said he is doing so because it serves justice and his country's security and foreign policy interests. Seeking Mr. Khadr's repatriation will do the same for Canada. At a time when the new President is extending his hand to the world, Mr. Harper should be the first to take it.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).