The Canadian Supreme Court has ordered the Canadian government to hand over every record it has on its own interviews with Omar Khadr, a Guantanamo detainee captured at just 15 years of age who is currently on trial at Guantanamo for the murder of US personnel.
Kirk Makin of the Globe and Mail writes:
The court pinned its decision on international agreements to which Canada is a signatory, and on the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has already found the Guantanamo Bay legal processes "to violate U.S. domestic law and international human rights obligations to which Canada subscribes.
"With Khadr's present and future liberty at stake, Canada is bound by the principles of fundamental justice and is under a duty of disclosure pursuant to s. 7 of the Charter," the Court said, in its 9-0 ruling. "The content of this duty is defined by the nature of Canada's participation in the process that violated its international human rights obligations.
The Harper Government had been refusing to provide Khadr's military defense team with any of the information it had obtained through interrogations it conducted beginning in 2003.
Khadr was captured on July 27, 2002, after a firefight in which SFC Christopher Speer was killed. Khadr was himself gravely injured, and was still recovering from these injuries at Guantanamo while, according to Khadr, he began to be abused with dogs, cold water, and stress positions.
This setback means not only that Khadr's defense will have access to a lot of the context of his interrogations denied to him by the Military Tribunals process, but adds to a growing body of Canadian Legal precedent that increasingly regards US activities as exceptional and extra-legal.