Saturday, July 01, 2006
A Canadian Terrorist in George Bush's Court (Heh! heh!)
I think listing out the questions invited by Doug Struck’s article in today’s Washington Post would take up more space than the article itself Canadian Trial Sought for Detainee. The sub-headline - Request Follows U.S. Court Ruling - raises the first question: Why would the Hamdan ruling encourage such a request? My guess is that now that the U.S. is re-focused on procedures for trying the detainees, it probably ain’t going to go well for those detainees charged.
Case-in-point: the story’s subject, Omar Khadr. Mr. Khadr “was charged with throwing a grenade that killed one U.S. soldier and partly blinded another during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002.”
In fact, despite the hoopla we hear constantly about prisoners at Gitmo not being charged with specific crimes, “[h]e is one of 10 Guantanamo detainees who have been formally charged under the process struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.”
(Nit-pick: I believe it was just the procedure under which those charges would be heard that was struck down on Thursday).
Mr. Struck then gives us the benefit of a Mr. Dennis Edney’s (one of Mr. Khadr’s Canadian attorneys) reaction to the Hamdan decision:
“Edney said he was "delighted and astounded" at the Supreme Court decision. "The decision gives the U.S. government the opportunity to retain its soul and conscience by following the rule of law," he said. "The Bush administration has turned the rule of law upside.”
But Mr. Edney has a problem:
“Canadian officials have exhibited little enthusiasm for taking on the case of Khadr, who at the time of the firefight was 15, a minor under international law.”
(Permit me a small side rant: just what the hell does he mean by “a minor under international law”? Where is that codified and what is its significance? “International law” is one of those throw away phrases many love to use even though its meaning is so ill-defined. I’m aware of no legal strictures that would impede a prosecution of Mr. Khadr in this instance; his age, at best, merely increases the head-shaking factor.)
This lack of enthusiasm could be because Omar Khadr is one of THOSE Khadrs:
“The Khadr family, which emigrated to Toronto in 1977, has been lionized in Canada by radical Muslims, discomfiting authorities and the larger Muslim community.
“Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian-born colleague of Osama bin Laden, was killed in a shootout with Pakistani authorities in 2003. Khadr's older brother, Abdullah, is being held in Toronto for possible extradition on charges in the United States that he plotted with and procured weapons for al-Qaeda. A younger brother in Toronto, Karim, was paralyzed in the shootout that killed his father.”
This brief family history can’t come close to capturing the horror of this family; however, Daniel Pipes maintains an excellent web-blog that does: The Khadrs, Canada's First Family of Terrorism, in the News
The Post loves to include a human interest side to most war-related stories, esp., it seems, if it can put the U.S. efforts in a negative light. Included with this story is a picture of a distraught Omar Khadr’s mother with the benign caption:
“One of Maha Elsamnah's sons is being held at Guantanamo Bay, charged with throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002.”
Mr. Struck didn’t include her in his litany of family transgressions but Mr. Pipes provides this link:
“The matriarch of the Khadr family insisted a month ago that al-Qaeda-sponsored training camps were the best place for her children. "Would you like me to raise my child in Canada to be, by the time he's 12 or 13 years old, to be on drugs or having some homosexual relationship?" she said. "Is it better?"
“Today, 47-year-old Maha El Samnah is to step off a plane at Toronto's Pearson airport.” April 9, 2004 globeandmail.com
(And she came back only to take advantage of Canada’s health care system for her son Karim who was paralyzed in that shootout that killed his father)
But I digress. After first being lectured early in the article by Mr. Edney on the importance of respecting the Canadian judicial system:
“We have legislation in place to try any Canadian who committed a war crime," one of Khadr's attorneys, Dennis Edney, said by telephone Friday from Edmonton, Alberta. "We suggest the American president respect the Canadian judicial system."
…we have to read until the very end to learn just how respectful the Canadian judicial system would be of U.S. interests in this case:
“Edney said there would be legal complications for the prosecution if Khadr were brought before a court in Canada. The chief prosecution witness, Sgt. Layne Morris, is "tainted," Edney said, because after he lost an eye in the attack that killed Speers, he and Speers's widow sued Omar Khadr's father in Utah and won a multimillion-dollar judgment.”
This was an important and timely story that needed to be told because…?
Case-in-point: the story’s subject, Omar Khadr. Mr. Khadr “was charged with throwing a grenade that killed one U.S. soldier and partly blinded another during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002.”
In fact, despite the hoopla we hear constantly about prisoners at Gitmo not being charged with specific crimes, “[h]e is one of 10 Guantanamo detainees who have been formally charged under the process struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.”
(Nit-pick: I believe it was just the procedure under which those charges would be heard that was struck down on Thursday).
Mr. Struck then gives us the benefit of a Mr. Dennis Edney’s (one of Mr. Khadr’s Canadian attorneys) reaction to the Hamdan decision:
“Edney said he was "delighted and astounded" at the Supreme Court decision. "The decision gives the U.S. government the opportunity to retain its soul and conscience by following the rule of law," he said. "The Bush administration has turned the rule of law upside.”
But Mr. Edney has a problem:
“Canadian officials have exhibited little enthusiasm for taking on the case of Khadr, who at the time of the firefight was 15, a minor under international law.”
(Permit me a small side rant: just what the hell does he mean by “a minor under international law”? Where is that codified and what is its significance? “International law” is one of those throw away phrases many love to use even though its meaning is so ill-defined. I’m aware of no legal strictures that would impede a prosecution of Mr. Khadr in this instance; his age, at best, merely increases the head-shaking factor.)
This lack of enthusiasm could be because Omar Khadr is one of THOSE Khadrs:
“The Khadr family, which emigrated to Toronto in 1977, has been lionized in Canada by radical Muslims, discomfiting authorities and the larger Muslim community.
“Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian-born colleague of Osama bin Laden, was killed in a shootout with Pakistani authorities in 2003. Khadr's older brother, Abdullah, is being held in Toronto for possible extradition on charges in the United States that he plotted with and procured weapons for al-Qaeda. A younger brother in Toronto, Karim, was paralyzed in the shootout that killed his father.”
This brief family history can’t come close to capturing the horror of this family; however, Daniel Pipes maintains an excellent web-blog that does: The Khadrs, Canada's First Family of Terrorism, in the News
The Post loves to include a human interest side to most war-related stories, esp., it seems, if it can put the U.S. efforts in a negative light. Included with this story is a picture of a distraught Omar Khadr’s mother with the benign caption:
“One of Maha Elsamnah's sons is being held at Guantanamo Bay, charged with throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002.”
Mr. Struck didn’t include her in his litany of family transgressions but Mr. Pipes provides this link:
“The matriarch of the Khadr family insisted a month ago that al-Qaeda-sponsored training camps were the best place for her children. "Would you like me to raise my child in Canada to be, by the time he's 12 or 13 years old, to be on drugs or having some homosexual relationship?" she said. "Is it better?"
“Today, 47-year-old Maha El Samnah is to step off a plane at Toronto's Pearson airport.” April 9, 2004 globeandmail.com
(And she came back only to take advantage of Canada’s health care system for her son Karim who was paralyzed in that shootout that killed his father)
But I digress. After first being lectured early in the article by Mr. Edney on the importance of respecting the Canadian judicial system:
“We have legislation in place to try any Canadian who committed a war crime," one of Khadr's attorneys, Dennis Edney, said by telephone Friday from Edmonton, Alberta. "We suggest the American president respect the Canadian judicial system."
…we have to read until the very end to learn just how respectful the Canadian judicial system would be of U.S. interests in this case:
“Edney said there would be legal complications for the prosecution if Khadr were brought before a court in Canada. The chief prosecution witness, Sgt. Layne Morris, is "tainted," Edney said, because after he lost an eye in the attack that killed Speers, he and Speers's widow sued Omar Khadr's father in Utah and won a multimillion-dollar judgment.”
This was an important and timely story that needed to be told because…?
