Print

Mail

wiki links

Lawyers fight to help Canadian in Guantanamo

Lawyers for a Canadian terror suspect held at Guantanamo Bay will appeal to Canada's supreme court today to force the government to release intelligence documents that might help his case.

Omar Khadr, 21, has been at the US detention facility in Cuba for five years.

He is expected to be one of the first to be tried by a military commission there, charged with killing a soldier during his arrest in Afghanistan.

Canadian intelligence officials interviewed Khadr, who was 15 at the time of his arrest in July 2002, in 2003 while he was in Guantanamo, and passed it on to the US military.

"I was very hopeful they [Canadians] would help me. I showed them my injuries and told them that what I had told the Americans was not right and not true," Khadr said, according to his affidavit.

"I said that I told the Americans whatever they wanted me to say because they would torture me. The Canadians called me a liar and I began to sob. They screamed at me and told me that they could not do anything for me," he said.

Khadr's lawyers want full disclosure of this information and the early discussions between Canada and the US that led to Khadr's transfer to Guantanamo.

"We want to know what the story was at that time and that which was been communicated to Canada to justify sending him to Guantanamo Bay," Khadr's Canadian lawyer Nathan Whitling said.

In addition, Khadr's legal team accuses Ottawa of "complicity" in the process and questions the entire legal basis of the Guantanamo trial proceedings.

Court documents filed by the British Colombia Civil Liberties Association and rights groups argue that the proceedings at the camp "violate the basic minimum standards set by international law."

Authorities in Ottawa tried to block today's hearing but the supreme court rejected their claim. The government argued that a Canadian court does not have the authority to evaluate on the legality of the US military commissions.

US authorities accuse Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, who was killed fighting Pakistani forces in 2003, of having links with al-Qaeda and encouraging his son to join up with the terror network.

Omar Khadr's US lawyer, Bill Kuebler, has argued that according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, his client should be seen as a victim rather than a combatant, because he was under 18 at the time he was arrested.

Whitling said Omar Khadr had "very little hope about the process. We try to install hope in him but he has very, very little if any."
This story has been viewed 564 times.