Confessed al-Qaeda terrorist and convicted murder Omar Khadr could be free in Canada soon after he returns home in a year. In short, “Guantanamo Child” has now become Ottawa’s problem.
After obstructing his return for years, the Harper government has agreed to look favourably on Mr. Khadr’s application to serve his prison time in Canada, once he serves one more year in Guantanamo.
The 40-year sentence imposed by a military panel Sunday, ending an on-again, off-again, war crimes trial that stretches back five years, was essentially tossed out – replaced by the plea deal that saw Mr. Khadr admit to murder, terrorism and spying in exchange for a nominal eight-year sentence of which only one more year is to be served in the notorious prisons for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo.
"It’s a huge victory for me and my family,” said Tabitha Speer, who cheered and fist-pumped in the air of the heavily-guarded courtroom when the seven senior U.S. officers on the panel – equivalent to a jury – imposed a 40-year-sentence, 15 more than military prosecutors had asked for.
As for taking her children to Toronto, where Mr. Khadr’s family lives, knowing that Mr. Khadr’s Canadian lawyers believe he will be free almost as soon as he is repatriated, Mrs. Speer said: ``I can’t say that’s a place I will want to go.”
After spending years in Camp 4 – a communal prison for the most compliant and least dangerous detainees – Mr. Khadr, now a convicted war criminal, was taken after sentencing to Camp 5, a fortress-like copy of a U.S. maximum security prison where he will spend most all but a few hours a day in solitary for the next year.
Dennis Edney, Mr. Khadr’s Canadian lawyer, called the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals – created by the Bush administration but retained by President Barack Obama despite his pledge to shutter the prisons – a charade.
"Over 1,200 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan and they picked on a 15-year-old,” he said. ``He’s not a radical jihadist, he’s a victim” adding that Mr. Khadr is an intelligent and gentle person who ``will be a worthy citizen.”
Mr. Khadr didn’t ``expect justice from this system,” Mr. Edney said.
Observers ``may choose to believe that through his plea Omar finally came clean and accepted his involvement in a firefight when he was 15 years of age or that this was one final coerced confession from a victimized young man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time because his father placed him there,” Mr. Edney added.
Political meddling by the Harper and Obama governments undercut the 40-year sentence, said Layne Morris, wounded in the same July, 2002, firefight in Afghanistan in which U.S. special forces medic Sergeant Christopher Speer was killed and Mr. Khadr, then a 15-year-old was shot twice in the back, and blinded.
"It’s an outrage to put Omar Khadr on the fast track to freedom in Canada,” Mr. Morris said, accusing both governments of undermining the war crimes tribunals sentence of 40 years.
In Ottawa, the government continued to attempt to distance itself from Mr. Khadr’s early return.
"The matter remains between Omar Khadr and the U.S. government,” Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon’s spokeswoman Melissa Lantsman said.
But senior U.S. government officials, prosecutors and defence attorneys all say that Mr. Cannon has approved the deal and an exchange of diplomatic notes has confirmed the Canadian government will favourably consider Mr. Khadr’s repatriation bid in a year.
The diplomatic notes make it explicitly clear that Ottawa has been involved.
"The Government of Canada therefore wishes to convey that, as requested by the United States, the Government of Canada is inclined to favourably consider Mr. Khadr's application to be transferred to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence, or such portion of the remainder of his sentence as the National Parole Board determines.”
