A breath of fresh air in this time came today when the Canadian Supreme Court voted 9-0 in a ruling signed simply " by the Court " that the records of all interrogations of the child soldier Omar Khadr, and any other records held by the Canadian Gov. be released to his Attys. They chose to follow their countrys constitution and laws, unlike our own gov.
The Supreme Court of Canada has ordered the federal government to hand over information to alleged terrorist Omar Khadr that it gleaned from interrogation sessions that Canadian agents held with him in 2003.
Now 21, Mr. Khadr's U. S. war-crimes trial is scheduled to begin later this year. His lawyers are seeking the material in order to prepare his defense.
The 9-0 decision – signed simply "by the Court" – said that Mr. Khadr is entitled to any records of the interviews, regardless of what form they are in. It stated that he must also be given any information that Canadian authorities have given to their US counterparts as a direct consequence of conducting the interviews.
Omar was arrested after being wounded by 2 gunshots to his back at the age of 15. At the time it was claimed that he was guilty of using a grenade against US Troops and had acted on his own. It recently came out that there was someone else who could of thrown those grenades, but that those records had been changed to hide that fact.
The U.S. military has charged Omar Khadr with murder for throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer during a U.S. military raid on July 27, 2002, on an al-Qaida compound in eastern Afghanistan. Khadr's case is on track to be the first to go to trial under a military tribunal system at this U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.
The military commander's official report the day after the raid originally said the assailant who threw the grenade was killed, which would rule out Khadr as the suspect. But the report was revised months later, under the same date, to say a U.S. fighter had only "engaged" the assailant, according to Kuebler, who said the later version was presented to him by prosecutors as an "updated" document.
One of the major problems that should become a point of contention is the fact that by holding a Child Soldier in Gitmo is a violations of our treaty obligations to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Khadr's own lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler it has been reported has said "the government manufactured evidence to make it look like Omar was guilty." If one of our own is willing to risk their career in the Navy it behooves us to look deeper. Steps like that are not done lightly.
Colonel Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor in the Defense Department’s Office of Military Commissions has written several OdEds over the past couple yrs about Gitmo. The first ones were in praise of the Military Commissions but he has since come to see the light of what is really going on. In the latest one I am aware of he had this to say:
TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, "We don’t do stuff like that."
Today, Tom Ahern might have to say: "We don’t do stuff like that very often." Or, "We generally don’t do stuff like that." That is a shame. Virtues requiring caveats are not virtues. Saying a man is honest is a compliment. Saying a man is "generally" honest or honest "quite often" means he lies. The mistreatment of detainees, like honesty, is all or nothing: We either do stuff like that or we do not. It is in our national interest to restore our reputation for the latter. (All opinions here are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Air Force or Defense Department.) Unforgivable Behavior, Inadmissible Evidence
Col. Davis was talking about Torture, but the same can be said about how we honor the treaties we have not only signed, but pushed for about the rights of children made to serve as soldiers. It is a disgrace that we would try a child for murder in war of our own making, especially one with a family background that would of made it impossible for him to refuse. Col. Davis resigned after having to deal with people like Waterboard Willie Haynes, and when he did resign he wrote this in a OpEd in the LATimes.
I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until Oct. 4, the day I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system. I resigned on that day because I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively or responsibly...AWOL military justice
Is this the type of system we want to try children and send them to prison for the rest of their life under ? It has become popular lately to say that people should just accept things like this because they are complicated. I will agree that this young mans case is very complicated, but that is even more reason we should look closely at his case, not ignore it and blindly accept what the Bush Admin. decides is right.
In making it's decision the Canadian Supreme Court acted in a way our own Supreme should act. They had this to say in their ruling.
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.
"In the present circumstances, this duty requires Canada to disclose to Khadr records of the interviews conducted by Canadian officials with him, and information given to U.S. authorities as a direct consequence of conducting the interviews, subject to claims for privilege and public interest immunity," it said...
"The violations of human rights identified by the United States Supreme Court are sufficient to permit us to conclude that the regime providing for the detention and trial of Mr. Khadr at the time of the CSIS interviews constituted a clear violation of fundamental human rights protected by international law," states the unanimous ruling released this morning.
Ottawa ordered to give Khadr interrogation documents