Lawyers for a young Canadian detainee at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay sued the Canadian prime minister on Friday to try to force him to repatriate the terror suspect.
The suit filed in Federal Court argues that Prime Minister Stephen Harper needs to intervene before Toronto-born Omar Khadr stands trial for war crimes before a US military commission in October.
The lawyers said Canada is obliged under international law to ensure Khadr’s rehabilitation and social reintegration since he was just 15 when he is alleged to have lobbed a grenade that killed an American medic in Afghanistan in 2002.
The lawyers argue he should have been granted special protections as a child soldier rather than being held in detention for the past six years.
Canada’s government “has done nothing except hide behind vague assurances that Omar is being treated ‘humanely’ — assurances the Canadian government has known for years to be absolutely false,” lawyers Dennis Edney and Nathan Whitling said in a statement on Friday.
However, US officials have taken the position that Khadr was 16 when he arrived at Guantanamo after he was transferred from the Bagram detention center in Afghanistan, and should be treated as an adult.
Although Khadr is the only western citizen still detained at the infamous prison, located at an isolated US military base in southeast Cuba, Harper has said that he will not seek his repatriation.
Harper has argued that the previous Liberal government decided that Khadr should face a war crimes trial in Guantanamo. He says his Conservative government, which took office in 2006, sought assurances that Khadr would be treated humanely.
And now that the legal process into Khadr case has begun, Harper has said that Canada had “no real alternative” to the widely condemned US process.
“It is time for Prime Minister Harper to stand up for the rights of a Canadian citizen,” said the lawyers on Friday.
Responded Harper’s chief spokesman Kory Teneycke: “It’s another attempt by Mr. Khadr’s lawyers to avoid trial on the charges of murder in violation of the laws of the war, attempted murder in violation of the laws of the war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying.”
The lawsuit filed on Friday follows a string of recent gains for Khadr’s defense team that have helped buttress their case to have him repatriated.
In May, a Federal Court judge found that Khadr’s treatment by US authorities in Guantanamo — who deprived him of sleep to soften him up in advance of a 2004 visit by Canadian interrogators — violated international laws against torture.
Following that judgment, the court ordered the release of more than seven hours of video documenting interrogation sessions involving the Canadian officials and Khadr from five years ago — interrogations that the US Supreme Court also later ruled took place in an illegal detention environment.
The video, which shows the then 16-year-old pleading for Canada’s help and his mother, garnered international headlines as the first ever glimpse at a Guantanamo interrogation.
Khadr’s Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler, said Friday that he fully supported the suit filed by the Canadian lawyers.
“Now we know that the Canadian government has known about, facilitated, and helped cover up the torture and abuse of a Canadian citizen,” Kuebler said from Washington.
“This is no longer just a matter of [government] policy,” he said.
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