Omar Khadr's return to Canada ends “one of the ugliest chapters,” to quote New York's Center for Constitutional Rights, in the history of America's notorious Guantanamo Bay gulag. But Khadr's arrival is bringing out the best, and the worst, in Canadians – fairness and compassion, hate and condemnation. Khadr was born in Canada, but when he was 11 his father took the family to Afghanistan. He was 15 when, in 2002, US jets bombed his compound and US soldiers attacked. He was wounded and captured. Khadr was accused of hurling a grenade that fatally wounded US Delta Force Sgt. Christopher Speer. He has been in different prisons since, mostly at Guantanamo. After he pleaded guilty to five war crimes, including murder, he received an eight-year sentence with a note that Canada would “favorably” consider his transfer to a Canadian jail after another year in Guantanamo. Khadr had said earlier that he was wounded and did not throw a grenade. But he signed the confession, written by the prosecutors, to avoid indefinite imprisonment and torture. Now 26, he's in Canada to serve the rest of his sentence. There is also public revulsion against Khadr because of his family. His mother, Maha Elsamnah, and sister, Zaynab, regularly badmouth Canada. Khadr's father Ahmed Said Khadr was arrested by Pakistanis in 1995 in connection with the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad. Ironically, he was freed after Prime Minister Jean Chretien requested Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to let him go. He was killed in a fight with Pakistani forces in 2003. What riles many Canadians is that the Khadr family seems to have no attachment to Canada but use it as a convenient place to live. Khadr's mother told the Toronto Star that her son had been “abused and misunderstood. I want Canada to give him his rights.” However, most of his siblings are living normal lives in Canada. While the evidence is that the Canadian government interrogated Khadr in Guantanamo and supplied the information to the US, and the government also delayed his return home, Ahmed Khadr himself had taken his family to Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight the Soviets. They stayed there after the ouster of the Soviets and helped the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Canada has nothing to do with these activities and with Omar Khadr's arrest and trial by the Americans. Many Canadians feel, however, that Khadr is a Canadian and was let down by his own government. Khadr was a child when he was captured. His lawyers and human rights advocates assert that his trial was illegal – killing a soldier in battle is a crime only if civilians, wounded soldiers or unarmed medics are killed – which Speers was not. The Bush Administration refused to try him in the US under normal laws. It arranged kangaroo trials in Guantanamo, Cuban territory held by force by the US, where laws are flouted brazenly. President George Bush self-servingly termed Afghanistan's Taliban government supporters or sympathizers as “unlawful combatants” and he excluded them from the normal rules of combat. Under the US War Crimes Act of 1996, those not in a state armed group and not wearing a uniform are war criminals if they engage in fighting. Ironically this definition makes the US and Bush war criminals. They attacked Afghanistan because Osama Bin Laden had planned the 9/11 attacks on the US in Afghanistan. But US officials and presidents routinely plan attacks, drone strikes, invasions, bombings, and subversion in other countries and also supply arms and aid that suppress and kill Palestinians and others and perpetuate their subjugation and the occupation of their lands. By the US's 9/11 logic, it would be fair for the victims to fight these terrorists. However, the US regards itself to be above the law and acts as such. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the ruling of lower courts that the government had violated Khadr's constitutional rights. The Toronto Globe and Mail offered a middle ground. It said in an editorial in part: “Someday, perhaps, Mr. Khadr will be seen as an exemplar of a mad moment in world history. A childhood spent being groomed for terrorism. A young adulthood in a coercive US military penal system, during which the country of his citizenship, Canada, added to the coercion, sending its officials to interrogate the then juvenile in the absence of legal counsel, even after three weeks of sleep deprivation, and then turning the fruits of those interrogations over to his captors. Canada's Supreme Court was unanimous in excoriating the government for having done so, saying it violated the most basic standards of justice. Now that he is back in Canada, those standards should prevail.” It is an ugly story. Hopefully, Khadr will move away from his past and become a productive and valued citizen in the only country he calls home.
– Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, public servant and refugee judge. He has received the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario and the Queen's Diamond and Golden Jubilee medals.
