For days now mainstream media and social media have been full of stories about the Canadian government’s decision to settle a lawsuit with former child soldier and U.S. prisoner Omar Khadr for reportedly $10.5 million and issue an apology.
One of the problems with social media is anyone can claim expertise and if one disagrees with a government, or anyone else for that matter it’s easy to accuse and abuse in 140 characters. It’s much harder to make sense of an incredibly complex issue.
Like many, my first reaction to the story was holy expletive.
Then I thought – why? Why would the government hand over $10.5 million to an alleged terrorist who has pleaded guilty to the murder of a U.S. soldier and injuring another?
In a thoughtful piece for the National Observer former Crown prosecutor Sandy Garossino wrote that with the exception of Khadr’s “confession” wrung from a traumatized and severely wounded teenager under abusive interrogation the evidence against him was remarkably thin.
His plea represented the only path to eventual freedom from the hell hole of a U.S. prison populated with adult terrorists.
Remember Khadr was 15 years old and under the influence of a father who would put his 15-year-old son in that situation. Apart from Khadr’s forced confession there was little evidence that he actually threw the grenade that killed U.S. soldier Sgt. Speer.
The fact is successive Canadian governments starting with Jean Chretien’s Liberals and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives washed their hands of Khadr instead of fighting for his return from Guantanamo Bay.
Other western governments were actively fighting to have their citizens returned from the U.S. prison while ours remained silent. The eventual settlement and apology didn’t come overnight. They came on the heels of two comprehensive judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Those judgments condemned the Canadian government for allowing Canadian intelligence officials to go to Guantanamo and interview Khadr whom they knew had suffered sleep deprivation and torture. They didn’t go to help a detained Canadian teen. The court ruled they violated Canada’s human rights obligations, and breached his constitutional rights.
Those are the words of the Supreme Court of Canada.
When I first questioned how the government could have come up with a more than $10-million settlement I discovered we had already spent more than $5 million in legal fees on the case and concluded that millions more would be spent on a case the government’s legal experts concluded would result in a win by Khadr and quite possibly an even bigger settlement.
Remember this is the second case where a Canadian fought his own government for not protecting him. Mahar Arar was arrested and held in Syria based on faulty information the RCMP provided U.S. intelligence. He was imprisoned and tortured and also won a $10-million settlement from Canada.
It’s troubling how quick people are to assume guilt and to tweet endlessly about a case they know little about.
In both cases, governments – and I emphasize both former Liberal and Conservative governments – did their best to demonize Khadr and Arar. In both cases they should have fought to at least bring them home, from the beginning not in the end.
Politically the Trudeau Liberals may have been better to fight the case to the bitter end and then blame the courts. It’s almost certainly what Harper would have done considering his distaste for the courts, especially the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin.
That may have been the politically smart approach, and it would have denied the Trudeau haters the venom that has been spewed in recent days on social media.
In the end, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms exists in part to protect citizens from abuse by governments foreign and domestic.
I’m not arguing Khadr’s innocence or guilt. I will argue he didn’t get the defence and assistance he required, and what this case demonstrates is governments of all stripes sometimes behave very badly to protect their collective behinds. A costly lesson.
Bill Good is a veteran broadcaster currently heard daily on News 1130.
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