Omar Khadr pleads guilty
October 25, 2010 - 11:57am
Continued from here.
It took less than an hour inside a sombre military courtroom Monday for Canadian Omar Khadr to plead guilty to murdering an American soldier and end a war crimes case that has dragged on for eight years.
The Toronto-born detainee told military judge Army Col. Patrick Parrish that he understood the charges, his confession, and the conditions of a plea agreement.
In addition to pleading guilty to throwing a grenade when he was 15 that fatally wounded Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer, Khadr is convicted of attempted murder, spying, conspiracy and providing material support to terrorism.
Hot topic this, eh?
In addition to the usual media suspects (National Post) describing him as a terrorist, The Star and G&M felt the need to underscore his appearance, "tall, burly and bearded" (a stark contrast to his being a wounded 15 year old). The Star chose to play up the melodrama of the grieving widow:
Speer’s widow Tabitha sat in the front row tightly clutching her sister’s hand and cried as Parrish mentioned her husband’s name.
When the plea was formally accepted at the end of the 55-minute hearing the only sound in the courtroom was the clang of her bracelets as she briefly pumped her sister’s hand, celebrating the end.
One of her silver bangles was engraved with her husband’s name.
I much prefer this article:
Guantanamo inmate pleads guilty
Canadian Omar Khadr admits to throwing grenade that killed US soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/10/20101025142318598641.html
Hear that loud boing-boing sound? Kangaroo court. Supported to the last by Harper et al and most of the canucklehead people too who bought the 'terrorist' bs hook, line and sinker. Because the criminals themselves control the justice process - there can be and will be no justice. The only good thing is that the international community is rapidly being disabused of illusions about 'that nice country Canada.'
Khadr Pleads Guility at Guantanamo
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/10/25/omar-khadr-trial-resumes.html
"Reacting to Khadr's guilty plea, a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the case is a 'matter between Mr Khadr and the US government. We have no further comment,' Catherine Loubier Cannon's director of communications wrote in an email.."
Just more proof that there is no longer any rule of law for Canadians. This type of Star Chamber system was unthinkable not very long ago. I grieve for this young man and fear for us all as confessions obtained under torture become the new Reality TV.
No Justice for Omar Khadr by Andy Worthington
That's weird but no matter how I try to access that Worthington item, I get this message: The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
The state of our media is pretty horrible when the LA Times does a much better job in covering this news:
Plea deal reached in case of Al Qaeda child soldier The Obama administration will be spared putting Canadian terrorism suspect Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner, on trial in relation to a firefight in Afghanistan when he was 15 and apprenticed to militant fighters.http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-guantanamo-plea-deal-20101026,0,4415036.story
OK...So let me get this straight.
If a foreign military were to invade Canada and I was to defend my country and fight back and unfortunately kill a member of the invading foreign military,I have then committed murder and should face imprisonment or execution?
I guess I'll smoke some matrix brew of PCP and crack and see the logic and support this judicial fraud.
You mean the canadian citizen (and pakistani citizen)? He wasn't defending his country but someone elses
He was in the middle of a firefight, defending his life.
You mean the canadian citizen (and pakistani citizen)? He wasn't defending his country but someone elses
OK,I see your point.
So I guess all the Canadian soldiers who fought in Europe in WW2 defending 'someone else's country' from invasion,were also criminals.
Don't bother trying to apply logic here.
The USA is a big gorilla that can dictate "The Law," and anyone who doesn't like it can go without bananas.
Of course, by any historical definition, Omar Khadr is no war criminal, unlike those who led the illegal invasion of Iraq, f'rinstance.
You mean the canadian citizen (and pakistani citizen)? He wasn't defending his country but someone elses
OK,I see your point.
So I guess all the Canadian soldiers who fought in Europe in WW2 defending 'someone else's country' from invasion,were also criminals.
Im sure they were, from someones point of view. Just as the many people from foreign countries that joined the SS were freedom fighters in someone elses opinion.
Don't bother trying to apply logic here.
The USA is a big gorilla that can dictate "The Law," and anyone who doesn't like it can go without bananas.
Of course, by any historical definition, Omar Khadr is no war criminal, unlike those who led the illegal invasion of Iraq, f'rinstance.
Given that the invaders of Iraq got after the fact blessings from the UN, they aint either. But I get your point and don't disagree with it.
Logic has no place here when its the US's foreign policy involved (or other nations like Israel for that matter or NATO)
oops
M Spector's link above works now. From the Worthington article:
...Of course, the Bush administration ignored its international obligations, and the advice of its own doctors, choosing instead to subject Khadr — and the majority of the 21 other confirmed juvenile prisoners at Guantánamo — to experimental detention and interrogation techniques, with no distinction made between adult and juvenile prisoners.
Moreover, in May 2003, when the story broke that child prisoners were being held at Guantánamo, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that they were “not children,” and the administration’s disdain for the rights of juvenile prisoners was such that Khadr and another juvenile prisoner, Mohamed Jawad, were put forward for trial by Military Commission. These special courts, conceived for trying dubious “war crimes,” were initially intended to accept evidence obtained through the use of torture, and to deliver the death penalty after trials that were noticeably lacking in any recognizable form of due process or adherence to established military law.
Khadr was charged in the first incarnation of the Commissions, ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June 2006, but after Congress brought them back to life in the fall of 2006 he was charged for a second time, and was followed, soon after, by Jawad, who may have been no more than 14 years old when he was seized after a grenade attack in Kabul in December 2002...
...Despite signing the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict on July 7, 2000, and advocating on the world stage for the rights of child soldiers from other countries, the Canadian government persistently refused to call for his repatriation, even though Canada’s Supreme Court had repeatedly stated that the government acted illegally in sending interrogators to interview Khadr at Guantánamo in 2003, and violated his rights under Canadian law.
With this track record, it would have been unsurprising if Khadr was unwilling to trust his home government even to accept the terms of a plea deal, and this must, of course, have been a deeply disturbing position in which to find himself. As a final reminder of hypocrisy, however, it is difficult to beat a comment about child soldiers made just six weeks ago by Ambassador Susan E. Rice, the US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at a Security Council debate on Somalia, which was picked up on by former US interrogator Matthew Alexander in an article in the Huffington Post. Ambassador Rice stated:
The United States strongly condemns the use of children … to pursue violent agendas. We call upon all parties to immediately release all children within their ranks, to halt child recruitment, and to provide for the proper reintegration into civilian life of former child soldiers.
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/10/
You mean the canadian citizen (and pakistani citizen)? He wasn't defending his country but someone elses
His father was Egyptian. His mother is a Jordanian Palestinian. Both parents immigrated to Canada and later became Canadian citizens.
Omar Khadr was born in Canada.
If we ignore the fact that he was a child soldier, Omar's legal status would then be no different from a U.S. mercenary working for say, Blackwater (now Xe Services) doing "security" in Afghanistan.
In case the Bush and Obama administrations didn't/don't know it, there's a war going on in Afghanistan.
People tend to get killed or injured in most wars.
Don't bother trying to apply logic here.
Of course, by any historical definition, Omar Khadr is no war criminal, unlike those who led the illegal invasion of Iraq, f'rinstance.
And I would daresay, the illegal invasion of Afghanistan.
No Afghan had anything to do with 9/11.
It is illegal to collectively punish innocent people by waging a war of aggression for a criminal act (9/11 acts of terrorism), not an act of war.
The majority of those found guilty at Nuremberg were charged with regime change - waging a war of aggression.
Regime change (war of aggression) is illegal no matter how much we dislike another country's government (in this case the Taliban government of Afghanistan) or what they do.
Totoally with you, Frmsldr.
'People Show Empathy' - On the Eve of Omar Khadr's Guility Plea his lawyer vents.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/10/25/people-show-empathy/
'People show empathy,' Edney said of Canadians' reaction to Khadr's life story, which for the past 8 years has seen him held at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
After the fact nothing happens.
I feel, not only the Canadian government, but the Canadian people have let down a citizen, a most vulnerable citizen."
Deal or No Deal, No Justice for Omar Khadr
http://www.globeandmail.com/news/world/americas/deal-or-no-deal-no-justi...
"There is no justice here,' said Dennis Edney, the outspoken Canadian lawyer who is part of Mr Khadr's defence team, adding Mr Khadr faces a grim choice: 'He either pleads guilty to avoid trial or he goes to trial and the trial is an unfair process.."
Khadr To Return to Canada: Lawyer
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/10/25/omar-khadr-trial-resume...
"Khadr's Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney, said Khadr will serve no more than 8 years as part of the plea deal and then be subject to parole board conditions upon his release. Edney, in a phone interview with CBC from Guantanamo Bay, labelled the plea deal 'a piece of paper' and said his client 'would have confessed to anything, including the killing of John F Kennedy, just to get out of this hellhole.
Had Omar refused, then he was faced with an unfair trial based on evidence that would be inadmissable in a real court, and the potential of life in prison in Guantanamo Bay. We support this decision and we would have done the same in his position.."
See also sidebar vids interviews with Dennis Edney and Romeo Dallaire
Of course Khadr pleaded guilty, because he knows he is:
This is pretty good proof, if any was needed, how the US empire views combatants in its endless wars. Those who fight for the Yanqui Empire are above the law, beyond any prosecutions, and those who fight back have no right to defend themselves. Whatever legal mumbo-jumbo is cobbled together to substantiate ongoing atrocities of the Empire is a distraction (but still important for the victims of the Empire) .
The Betrayal of Omar Khadr - by Andy Worthington
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/10/26-5
"with Khadr's plea deal, the uncomfortable truth about the Commissions - that they have been established to try non-existent war crimes - has been swept aside..
As a result, Omar Khadr may have taken the only realistic route open to him but the price has been the apparent validation of a fundamentally lawless process, which could have been legally challenged had he been subjected to a full trial.."
I stil don't understand how killing an armed soldier in the war could constitute murder. is this all just based on an excuse that he wasn't wearing a uniform? So if an undercover policeman shoots someone, he could be charged with murder?!
From the above link:
Not "You should only do this if you truly believe it is the truth".
Because Parrish knows it's not the truth.
I stil don't understand how killing an armed soldier in the war could constitute murder. is this all just based on an excuse that he wasn't wearing a uniform? So if an undercover policeman shoots someone, he could be charged with murder?!
It is US legal slight of hand which denies the status of "soldier" to their current purported enemies as "enemy combatants" in effect, subject torture and stripped of Geneva Convention protection:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_combatant
It matters not that the US was the invader. The invaders are "soldiers" anyone that opposes them are the sub-species "enemy combatants"
In other conflicts the 15 year old Khadr would also have been been considered a "child soldier"
The United States has detained minors during their War on Terror. Omar Khadr, a 15 year old Canadian citizen, arrested in Afghanistan in 2002, and held at Guantanamo for the past {....]years was to have been one of the first detainees to be charged before a military commission. Human Rights Watch charges that, "the US government incarcerated him with adults, reportedly subjected him to abusive interrogations, failed to provide him any educational opportunities, and denied him any direct contact with his family."[60
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children
It's explained in the Worthington piece and accompanying link:
"under a 2003 DOD executive order of President Bush, the President attempted to create a new war offence called 'Murder by an Unprivileged Belligerent.."
simply a new wrinkle in criminalizing resistence to imperial barbarism and as stated, avoiding international law sanctions.
I stil don't understand how killing an armed soldier in the war could constitute murder. is this all just based on an excuse that he wasn't wearing a uniform? So if an undercover policeman shoots someone, he could be charged with murder?!
American, Afghani, Iraqi and other nationals working for American security firms in Afghanistan and Iraq often wear only civilian clothes but do kill and injure people in combat.
Also, America's proxy allies, the Northern Alliance, are private armies who owe their allegiance not to Afghanistan, but to their war lord leaders and often do not wear uniforms either, but kill and injure people in combat.
CTV News: Khadr Pleads Guilty to War Crimes - Phone Interview with Dennis Edney from Guantanamo Bay (see sidebar vids)
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20101025/gitmo-kjadr-101025
"We've got to look at why nobody came to his rescue...and I'm sorry to have to say this, but I'm referring to all of us..'
Dennis Edney, Lawyer for Omar Khadr
America and Obama Hit Bottom: Pressuring Child Soldier to Plead Guilty to Murder Violates International Law and Basic Common DecencyWith the collaboration and complicity of Canada in this 'pressuring'
OK...child soldier drafted at the age of 14 facing a fire fight by an invading foreign army kills an American soldier and is branded a 'terrorist' and a 'murderer'
Meanwhile,it's been leaked that members of this foreign army were killing civilians for sport.
This picture can only be seen without its blatant distortions,deceptions and bald faced lies by a twisted,amoral,tyrannical loon.
If a child soldier retaliating against an attack by invading forces can be labeled a 'terrorist' and a 'murderer',how about the 'soldiers' who have been caught committing REAL war crimes?
I guess it's classic us against them where the only heroes are those who pray to jesus and eat at McDonald's and the enemy is and always will be the brown skinned,false god worshipping unAmericanized (uncivilized) cave dwellers who are not lying on their backs and praising their oppressors as the freedom messiahs they keep telling the world they are like a submissive monkey should.
OK...So let me get this straight.
If a foreign military were to invade Canada and I was to defend my country and fight back and unfortunately kill a member of the invading foreign military,I have then committed murder and should face imprisonment or execution?
I guess I'll smoke some matrix brew of PCP and crack and see the logic and support this judicial fraud.
It’s actually worse than that….because they always leave out the two important factors
1) They killed his father in front of him…imagine you’re a 15 year old kid and the American soldier murders your daddy in front of you….the soldier is lucky the grenade wasn’t shoved up his F&^^n ass and the pin pulled….if he didn’t throw the gernade then he has more control than any soldier I ever met.
2) They shot him in the back like cowards but remember he wasn’t a child soldier ..shooting a kid in the back = true coward.
Yep ..take away there edge and the US will fold like a house of cards…as long as they have the upper hand of abuse they will kill and get a way with lying about it and if they can get the media to play along they will continue to kill childrens fathers and shoot kids in the back.
I think any level headed person can see that kahdar is only pleading guilty so he can get the hell out of the guantanamo torture facility...once he's out he can relate everything honestly..but you have to wonder why do they want to keep him there for one year no matter what sentence..what are they going to do to him in that one year? My guess torture him to the point of permanent brain damage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkM5eyN8ytI&feature=user
A good review of the Khadr situation from various voices:
By William Fisher
NEW YORK, Oct 26, 2010 (IPS) - With tongue in cheek, constitutional experts congratulated the U.S. government Tuesday for negotiating a plea deal with Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr, thus avoiding a trial in the military commission "puppet theatre" of a defendant who was just 15 at the time of his offences....
The rest here:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53298
Yup. And speaking of "members of this foreign army killing civilians for sport" - what about the ongoing and secret Sand Trap Inquiry into 'improper killing' by JTF2?? Given the propensity of our 'representatives' to agree among themselves to cover up such things - is anybody working on this?
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/09/13/detainee-investigation.html
"Canada's Defence Department quietly began a major inquiry into the Afghanistan operation and the military's elite Special Forces unit two years ago..
During the 3 year period of the course of the Sand Trap investigations, 2005 to 2008, the JTF2 unit was attached to the American Special Forces command based in Kandahar. JTF2 took its tactical directions from the Americans..
The Sand Trap investigations are not part of the Military Police Complaints Commission (MPCC) public hearings into allegations that military police failed to investigate senior officers responsible for transfers involving a risk of torture..
THIS IS A DISTINCT AND BROADER INVESTIGATION, FAR BROADER THAN ONLY THE MPCC WOULD LOOK AT.."
Given the recent revelations of the endemic, systematic and widespread use of torture and abuse by US and British Forces, especially evident in the WikiLeaks dump, and the testimony of Guantanamo detainees like Khadr, is it not reasonable to conclude that Canada is involved in a coverup of its own more unsavoury activities in this war? We need a full scale, public inquiry into all aspects of Canada's participation in the War on Terror, NATO and etc. My MP has been completely unhelpful on this, as he is paid to be. If anyone hears anything more of JTF2 and Sand Trap, I'd appreciate hearing..
The US has not finished with Khadr with the plea bargain--They are putting out their "experts" to make sure there is no lesser sentence is visited on their torture subject:
The dependence of the prosecution's forensic expert Welner on Nicolai Sennels has been questioned by the defense:
Based on his research, Sennels concluded that the integration of Muslims into Europe is impossible.
"... Sennels declares that "massive inbreeding within the Muslim culture during the last 1,400 years may have done catastrophic damage to their gene pool."...Sennels goes on to call the Koran a "criminal book that forces people to do criminal things."...
"We Europeans are sick and tired of criminal foreigners being invited to our countries," Sennels says in the letter.
http://www.globallethbridge.com/Credibility+psychiatrist+Khadr+case+ques...
Without referring to Sennels, Jeff Kaye in his excellent piece,
"The Psychiatric Demonization of Omar Khadr"
recognizes a common theme:
http://my.firedoglake.com/valtin/2010/10/20/the-psychiatric-demonization...
There is no such thing as "al-Qaeda." Khadr is a designated bogeyman.
Turkish Intelligence: Al-Qaeda a U.S. Covert Operation 2005
For instance, Abdurahman Khadr, who (according to ABC News Online) “lived side-by-side with Osama bin Laden,” was a “double agent, sent to spy on Al Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo Bay and in Bosnia.”
I just can't get past how disgusted I am at Canada being complicit in the conviction of a child soldier.
This is something that does not just devalue the present it does the past.
I know that Canada has been hypocritical in many respects for a long time and we are a part of the empire. However, there have been some achievements, even modest ones that are being wiped out by what is going on now.
It’s actually worse than that….because they always leave out the two important factors
1) They killed his father in front of him…imagine you’re a 15 year old kid and the American soldier murders your daddy in front of you….the soldier is lucky the grenade wasn’t shoved up his F&^^n ass and the pin pulled….if he didn’t throw the gernade then he has more control than any soldier I ever met.
2) They shot him in the back like cowards but remember he wasn’t a child soldier ..shooting a kid in the back = true coward.
3) Also left out is the fact that the "crimes" Khadr is charged with did not exist at the time he allegedly committed them. They were hastily enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2006 in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that president Bush did not have authority to set up the war crimes tribunals and that the "military commissions" were illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Conventions. The government then dropped all pending charges against Khadr and laid brand new ones against him under the new post-Hamdan legislation.
Khadr is not on trial under international law, but under special legislation unique to the USA that purports to be applying international law, but in fact is a travesty of it.
The question that I have: Would you sit in the same room with him if he had access to a weapon (knife, bat, gun, rope....)?
I'd pick him over you.
I second that.
Damn straight. Khadr sounds like a stand-up guy to me.
The more I hear about this the more I think US soldiers in foreign lands deserve to have hand grenades thrown in their general direction.
Here is a follow-up interview with David Lindorff, US constitutional expert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gskxFTd1xvA
This case has been a travesty from the get go. I was reminded his interrogators extracted a confession from 15 year old Khadr that he had witnessed Maher Arar training in a terrorist camp in Pakistan by Don Martin. If that does blow out credibility of any of his extracted confessions out of the water, I don't what does.
And the prosecution's forensic psychiatrist is a racist quack who's making millions out of trying to measure "evilness". Real scientists have dismissed his work as being ludicrous.
America and Obama Hit Bottom: Pressuring Child Soldier to Plead Guilty to Murder Violates International Law and Basic Common DecencyI find this whole case tragic. A 15 year old BOY, pushed into violence by his parents and now being punished as an adult. What happened to the Convention on the Rights of the Child Protocol? Isn't it hypocritical to on the one hand be calling for armies in Africa (and other places) to stop recruiting and using child soldiers and seeking their reintegration into society, and on the other doing NOTHING to help a child soldier who should be under Canadian protection? Instead they throw him to the wolves-- leaving him to languish in an adult population in Guantanamo Bay. Claiming he wasn't tortured. Really, telling a 15 year old child, who is alone and in custody stories of the gang-rape deaths of other inmates who refused to cooperate in order to elicit a confession isn't torture? What's the definition of torture again, ""any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or MENTAL, is intentionally inflicted... on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him... a confession". How does that not qualify?
This boy should have been rehabilitated under international law. If he was a national of any other country-- the US and Canada would be slamming the government responsible for human rights violations. Hypocrites.
deleted
The Khadrs: Canada's First al-CIA'duh Family
1) They killed his father in front of him…imagine you’re a 15 year old kid and the American soldier murders your daddy in front of you….the soldier is lucky the grenade wasn’t shoved up his F&^^n ass and the pin pulled….if he didn’t throw the gernade then he has more control than any soldier I ever met.
I'm sorry, but this claim is not true. Pakistani police shot (Omar Khadr's father) Mr. Khadr in another failed bank heist, (presumably) meant to finance Al-Qaeda.
The reason why Omar was in that firefight was his father dragged him (at the age of 9) and his family to the Af-Pak region and put him in radical Islamist madrassas that provided people and minors like Omar Khadr, with weapons training.
I'm sorry, but this claim is not true. Pakistani police shot (Omar Khadr's father) Mr. Khadr in another failed bank heist, (presumably) meant to finance Al-Qaeda.
I'd like to know your source for the "failed bank heist" claim. Most authoritative sources say Ahmed Khadr was killed in an attack by Pakistani forces on a supposed Al-Qaeda camp.
His youngest son, Abdul Karim Khadr, was seriously wounded in the same attack, and is paralyzed from the waist down as a result.
Omar was already in Guantanamo at the time.
In fact he had been there for a year when his father died in the fight with the Pakistani forces
CIA’s Illegal Operations in Central Asia Using Islam & Madrassas
Before the beginning of anticommunist jihad there were only a few dozen of them. Today there are more than 30,000 schools comprising the madrassa system in Central Asia.
Obama waiver allows U.S. aid to 4 countries using child soldiers:
President Obama has granted a waiver allowing four countries to continue receiving U.S. military aid even though they use child soldiers, officials said Wednesday.
Human rights groups reacted with surprise and concern, saying the decision would send the wrong message.
... Obama sent a memo to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, dated Monday, saying that it was "in the national interest" to waive a cutoff of military assistance for Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Yemen.
... Senior U.S. officials said Wednesday that Yemen was exempted because ending military aid would jeopardize the country's ability to fight al-Qaeda. In Sudan, U.S. military assistance will be critical in helping the unstable southern part of the country build military institutions if it votes to secede in a January referendum, as expected, officials said.
Congo was exempted because U.S.-funded programs there are aimed at helping the military become more professional and less abusive, officials said. Chad got a pass because of its role in fighting terrorism and assistance with the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. In addition, U.S. aid goes toward helping that country's military end its practice of using child soldiers, officials said.
... Jesse Eaves, policy advisor on children's issues for the humanitarian group World Vision, noted that the law did not mandate a cutoff of all forms of military assistance for offenders. For example, they could have still gotten help in eliminating their use of child soldiers.
"That kind of assistance is still allowed under the law without invoking the waiver. That's why this is a disturbing step," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/27/AR201010...
But obviously how could they cut off aid for that reason while convicting a chilc soldier-- perhaps there was an understanding about the imediate hypocrisy of the alternative.
But obviously how could they cut off aid for that reason while convicting a chilc soldier-- perhaps there was an understanding about the imediate hypocrisy of the alternative.
Not an issue.
US exceptionalism does not allow the invocation of "hypocrisy". What is sauce for the goose is never sauce for der Uber Gander. In the Khadr case, the legalized semantic slight of hand means he cannot be designated a child soldier.
A position embraced by the Harper government and its complicit media.
This is a wonderful new international regime if you are a fledgling empire. The American's allow their puppet governments a free reign to use child soldiers while creating a new class of combatant fighting them and their puppets that is no longer covered by any international law only the new imperial military law. I am abhorred and afraid for the planet but I actually think it is not inconsistent.
Gitmos Indelible Stain - by Sherwood Ross
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross10282010.html
"additionally, guards were responsible for countless acts of murder, including death by crucifixion, lynching, poisoning, snakebite, witholding of medicines, starvation and bludgeoning of innocent victims..."
and this barbarism is upheld and publicly supported by the government and many Canadians as suitable and deserved for the boy soldier and citizen, Omar Khadr. Canada has become a place where seemingly all official evils are permitted to have their way.
1) They killed his father in front of him…imagine you’re a 15 year old kid and the American soldier murders your daddy in front of you….the soldier is lucky the grenade wasn’t shoved up his F&^^n ass and the pin pulled….if he didn’t throw the gernade then he has more control than any soldier I ever met.
I'm sorry, but this claim is not true. Pakistani police shot (Omar Khadr's father) Mr. Khadr in another failed bank heist, (presumably) meant to finance Al-Qaeda.
The reason why Omar was in that firefight was his father dragged him (at the age of 9) and his family to the Af-Pak region and put him in radical Islamist madrassas that provided people and minors like Omar Khadr, with weapons training.
Funny I heard this when the FIRST trial was taking place and they quickly started muzzling and censoring everything ..no wonder. I wouldn’t be surprised if the US went on a disinformation campaign after that…if there ever was a reason to disinform that would be it. It actually doesn’t matter anymore because of all the overwhelming evidence piled up over the years that do point to the US soldiers being cowardly and murderous and terroristic…kid killers.... baby killers ...you name it they did it....rouge nation etc . But at that time they were still pulling wool over the gullible publics eyes.
They lie every step of the way on everything...everything . The only things they will admit too are incidents that are actually caught on video tape as they are caught red handed. What is really on trial is the US military and government and how phony and crooked they look in the eyes of the world. The world doesn't need Ahnadinajad to tellus how evil the US has become. The world is witnessing it first hand....with the Khahdar trail as another example of the US playing Nazi state ....the kind of stuff they used to criticize other countries of behaving like....and you should of heard what they wanted to do to those countries! Turn to glass..bomb into the stone age..you name it.
Send Kahdar home and buy him a nice ranch in Alberta paid by the Conservatives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkM5eyN8ytI&feature=user
Lawrence Cannon denies role in Khadr repatriation deal
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/lawrence-ca...
Send Kahdar home and buy him a nice ranch in Alberta paid by the Conservatives.
I concur with this idea fully and completely.
NIMBY?
No Khadr Return Deal in Place
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/10/28/khadr-cannon-canada.html
"The Canadian government has not committed to repatriating Omar Khadr as part of the Guantanamo Bay prisoner's plea deal with US authorities, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon says..."
So, by means of having suckered Khadr into pleading guilty, they now neatly avoid the international disgrace of a trial, but renege on the deal. Looks like Khadr stays in the 'hellhole' Guantanamo. These people are truly monsters.
They need a bogeyman.
The American inquisition is in desperate need of bogeymen after some number of western world countries were able to free their falsely accused Qaeda nationals by demanding that Uncle Sam respect international laws at the time. Our colonial administrators were deliberately too slow on the draw to bring Omar home then when he was still a child. Our CA's in Ottawa continue to play along with the US inquisition's al-Qaeda bogeymen fairy tale.
Conservatives are megalomaniacs and sociopaths...They're self entitled power junkies.
And everyone knows to never trust a junkie.
Ya I think too many of them are doped up on this al-Qaeda mythos. Not all of them mind you. Some US conservatives have admitted publicly that the war on terror is a bogus war, and all because Uncle Sam has neglected to create sustainable long-term national energy policies. The Democrats are just as guilty.
Send Kahdar home and buy him a nice ranch in Alberta paid by the Conservatives.
Hahahahahaha, love it!
So I guess all the Canadian soldiers who fought in Europe in WW2 defending 'someone else's country' from invasion,were also criminals.
And not just your run of the mill criminals, but they would have been charged with "war crimes" for fighting at Juno beach shooting at the Nazis.
So I guess all the Canadian soldiers who fought in Europe in WW2 defending 'someone else's country' from invasion,were also criminals.
And not just your run of the mill criminals, but they would have been charged with "war crimes" for fighting at Juno beach shooting at the Nazis.
The Hitler machine was invading every country in Europe and waging illegal wars.
Hitler was bombarding England,hence Canada got involved in the war....And Canada was fighting against an invading army waging illegal wars.
Sound familiar?
If not,replace the Nazis with the U.S. and their right wing lackey ass kissers.
Replace Hitler with Dick Cheney and pretty much any of their compliant,sadistic and sociopathic puppets (i.e. Harper,Sarkozy et al)
And replace Khadr as a soldier ( a child soldier as that) defending himself against these assholes.
And I apologize in advance if you were being sarcastic.
CBC Connect with Mark Kelley On Omar Khadr: (vid)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJixO4ZKkhA&feature=player_embedded#!
the old mothercorp says these are the views of "most Canadians'
Key Witness in Khadr Case Based Testimony on Work of anti-Muslim Bigot
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/khad-o29.shtml
"On Wednesday, Khadr's defence attorneys had the opportunity to cross examine the psychiatrist. The attorneys were able to expose the fact that Welner had based his assessment of Khadr and radical Islam largely on the work of Danish psychologist Nicolas Sennels, an outspoken anti-Muslim bigot and the author of 'Among Criminal Muslims'. During questioning, Welner admitted speaking with Sennels by phone before making his final assessment of Khadr. Sennels described the Koran as 'a criminal book that forces people to do criminal things'"
The federal government's own research suggests Canadian prisoners transferred back here from foreign jails have a relatively low recidivism rate, CBC News has learned.
A briefing note prepared for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews earlier this year showed that just over three per cent of offenders transferred back committed another crime while on parole. In the five-year span ending in 2008, of 473 people who were repatriated and later paroled, only 16 reoffended.
The figures come to light as the Canadian government seeks more freedom to refuse prisoner transfers.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/10/28/prison-transfer-recidivism-figure-briefing-note.html#ixzz13kgpHR2v
Key Witness in Khadr Case Based Testimony on Work of anti-Muslim Bigot
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/khad-o29.shtml
"On Wednesday, Khadr's defence attorneys had the opportunity to cross examine the psychiatrist. The attorneys were able to expose the fact that Welner had based his assessment of Khadr and radical Islam largely on the work of Danish psychologist Nicolas Sennels, an outspoken anti-Muslim bigot and the author of 'Among Criminal Muslims'. During questioning, Welner admitted speaking with Sennels by phone before making his final assessment of Khadr. Sennels described the Koran as 'a criminal book that forces people to do criminal things'"
Sennels is a piece of sh*t racist. He claimed that Muslim brains were wired for violence after 1400 years of inbreeding. "Forensic psychiatrist" Welner never read his work but relied on articles and conversations. He advocates a doctrine of measuring evil which most in the scientific community have denounced as ludicrous.
Given that the invaders of Iraq got after the fact blessings from the UN, they aint either. But I get your point and don't disagree with it.
Logic has no place here when its the US's foreign policy involved (or other nations like Israel for that matter or NATO)
Not true. No "blessing from the UN". Besides being no UN approval for an invasion of Iraq,( only 4 of 15 SC members voted for the US war resolution--9 were needed), there has since been no attempt in the UN to rule on the wars illegality-- for obvious reasons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War
By the way, what's with your inflammatory handle "Israel Delenda Est" (Israel must be destroyed) modeled on the Latin whereby Carthage is razed to the ground?
As it turns out,Khadr was not just a victim of torture at the hands of the American military at Guatanamo.
His sentencing hearing was ajourned today (Friday) when it was revealed that Khadr was threatened by an American interrogator at Guatanamo of a gang rape.
CBC Connect with Mark Kelley On Omar Khadr: (vid)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJixO4ZKkhA&feature=player_embedded#!
the old mothercorp says these are the views of "most Canadians'
My God! Those two guys are Tokyo Rose and Lord Haha of the north. How they can fit all that stupidity into one news room is an amazing feat in itself. Kelly and Lavant have made kissing American ass both an art form and a science.
The figures come to light as the Canadian government seeks more freedom to refuse prisoner transfers.
In fact, over the past years the Harper administration has had the highest percentage of refusing prisoner transfers from the U.S. to Canada of any Canadian government.
Do you think the current Bill that has had two readings by the House (that wil grant the government greater freedom of refusing prisoner transfers) was tailored with Omar Khadr in mind?
In a word: yes
As it turns out,Khadr was not just a victim of torture at the hands of the American military at Guatanamo.
His sentencing hearing was ajourned today (Friday) when it was revealed that Khadr was threatened by an American interrogator at Guatanamo of a gang rape.
Um, yes that would be another example of further (psychological) torture by the U.S. military.
It had occurred at the Bagram (Afghanistan) prison where Omar Khadr was first detained. It was part of his interrogation. It was meant to frighten a confession out of him.
This information was released at GTMO some months ago, after the interrogator himself had been charged with abusing prisoners in a Court Martial.
He testified as a witness at GTMO because he was the interrogator who had tortured Mr. Khadr in this manner.
Interestingly, he was sympathetic toward Mr. Khadr.
ETA/UPDATE:
Here's a link that provides all the nauseating details:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/30-6
In a word: yes
I wonder how Michael "Torture Lite" Ignatieff and the Liberals will vote on the final reading of the Bill?
Or is that an obvious rhetorical question with an even more obvious answer?
In a word: yes
I wonder how Michael "Torture Lite" Ignatieff and the Liberals will vote on the final reading of the Bill?
Or is that an obvious rhetorical question with an even more obvious answer?
Sadly, yes.
I don't think I recognize this country anymore.
In a word: yes
I wonder how Michael "Torture Lite" Ignatieff and the Liberals will vote on the final reading of the Bill?
Or is that an obvious rhetorical question with an even more obvious answer?
Yes, Count Igulla and the Libs will vote for it if they continue their established pattern of complicity--and don't forget the NDP Foreign Affairs "Critic" Paul Dewar wanted to lobby for these enemies of international law in their UN Security Council bid.
[edited]
There's nothing like matters of foreign policy to separate the genuine progressives from the fakes.
And Omar Khadr can run for the NDP when he gets home, just like Lavant and Kelly suggest will happen without mentioning Maher Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh. It's all a communist plot to undermine the colonial administrativeship in Ottawa.
There's nothing like matters of foreign policy to separate the genuine progressives from the fakes.
Absolutely so NB
Torture is finally Mentioned... - by Andy Worthington
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2010/10/30/torture-is-finally-mentioned...
"Everything about the last week's events at Guantanamo has been deeply disturbing.."
Obama's Blacksite Prison - by Dave Lindorff
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10272010.html
"A victory for the government in a federal court in New York Monday marks another slide deeper into Dick Cheney's 'dark side' for the Obama administration. The lingering question is: why does the US government so adamantly want to hide information about where capitives were first taken into military custody, their citizenship, the length of their captivity, and the circumstances under which they were captured?
Making matters worse is a string of continuing reports from people released from Bagram, including some very recent, that it is a site where torture is routinely applied to prisoners.."
King's Students' Support 'Academic Freedom'
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/King+students+support+academic+freed...
"King's University College will stand by its students and professors who continue to take a special interest in the case of Omar Khadr..."We are also a place where justice is one of the callings of the Christian faith.' The King's students took an academic lesson about justice into the real world. They investigated the Khadr case and found Canada did not live up to its principles of justice.."
From Khadr With Love: Professor Exchanged Letters with Acccused Terrorist For Two Years
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/From+Khadr+with+love+Professor+exchange...
"Your letters are like candles very bright in my hardship and darkness.' These are the words of Omar Khadr, written to Arlette Zink, an English professor at King's University College, in Edmonton..'
Military Jury Takes Time Weighing Khadr's Sentence
http://www.canada.com/news/Military+jury+takes+time+weighing+Khadr+sente...
"A military jury has been asked to decide whether Omar Khadr is a murderer and terrorist who only expressed remorse at the 11th hour or a talented young man who ws used by al Qaida - deserves a 'first choice' in Canada. Prosecution and defence lawyers delivered their final arguments Saturday at the war-crimes tribunal at Guantanamo Bay...
This is the longest jurors have taken to decide a sentence at the war-crimes tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, where four cases have been completed.."
-
this monstrous legal debauchery of an American pig's ear will be turned into a nice PR silk purse to sell the idea that this is after all still American justice and cannot therefore be anything but true and good in the end - even as applied by their little gitmo gestapo military commission. . .
Omar K was fed into a sausage machine of horror by those that presume to lead us still further and deeper into even darker depravities. And there are still too many prepared to follow them there. I hope George Galloway bites into Canadian foreign policy as I think he should and is capable of doing on his upcoming tour. And I really think he should speak of these and other things at the large Toronto antiwar rally being planned for that special monster Tony Blair's accursed arrival.
Roughing up that poodle of Yanqui imperialism will be child's play for gorgeous George. I predict a delicious ... thumping. ar ar ar
Omar Khadr's Guantanamo Show Trial - by Thomas Walkom
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/883469--walkom-omar-khadr-s-g...
"They will ignore, as amost everyone seems to ignore, the absurdity of prosecuting a [child] soldier for killing his enemy in battle.."
He might be guilty, but so are we. shame on us.
He's not guilty of the sins of his father, but we are guilty of the sins of our government. The shame is all ours.
Omar Khadr Sentenced to Symbolic 40 Years
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/10/31/guantanamo-khadr-sentencing.htm...
"On hearing the sentencing, Khadr's Canadian lawyer Dennis Edney said justice was not served in this case, which he said was the first prosecution of a juvenile for war crimes in 6 decades.
'The fact that the trial of a child soldier, Omar Khadr, has ended with a guilty plea in exchange for his eventual release to Canada does not change the fact that fundamental principles of law and due process were long since abandoned in Omar's case,' he said in a statement. 'In exchange for repatriation, Omar was required to sign an admission of facts which was stunning in its false portrayal of him'
The federal government hasn't said whether it will repatriate Khadr and reiterated Sunday that it didn't interfere in this judicial matter that's between Khadr and the United States.."
The whole Khadr case just illustrates the absolute hypocrisy of the American government. Not that ours is much better, but it's just so blatantly, ridiculously WRONG - morally, legally, etc. that it makes a joke of all the idiotic "liberty" and rights-based rhetoric that every US politician spews when given the chance.
Khadr's "confession" is a joke (albeit an unfunny one). Stick me in Guantanamo Bay for 8 years and I'd probably "confess" to being Russell's Orbiting Teapot.
When you read it, you can practically hear the "We've always been at war with Eurasia" coming through.
Key Witness in Khadr Case Based Testimony on Work of anti-Muslim Bigot
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/khad-o29.shtml
"On Wednesday, Khadr's defence attorneys had the opportunity to cross examine the psychiatrist. The attorneys were able to expose the fact that Welner had based his assessment of Khadr and radical Islam largely on the work of Danish psychologist Nicolas Sennels, an outspoken anti-Muslim bigot and the author of 'Among Criminal Muslims'. During questioning, Welner admitted speaking with Sennels by phone before making his final assessment of Khadr. Sennels described the Koran as 'a criminal book that forces people to do criminal things'"
Sennels is a piece of sh*t racist. He claimed that Muslim brains were wired for violence after 1400 years of inbreeding. "Forensic psychiatrist" Welner never read his work but relied on articles and conversations. He advocates a doctrine of measuring evil which most in the scientific community have denounced as ludicrous.
The scumbag "psychiatrist" Welner was recently given space in - where else? - the National Post to argue for "deradicalization" programs for Guantanamo inmates. Highly reminiscent of the psychiatrists who ran the Stalinist "re-education camps".
According to Welner, if you believe in jihad against imperialism, you're a psychopath.
the US psychiatric establishment has long been an enthusiastic participant in the war on terror and an adjunct to US warmaking for even longer. Psychiatry in general has always been primarily a police action by the state. The head of both the Canadian Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association, Dr. Donald Ewan Cameron was notorious for his MKULTRA experiments for the CIA. Welner is a particularly repellent example of this Dr Mengele for hire tendancy. No surprise he was given space in a major Canadian newspaper where the malevolent Islamophobia is second to none. This is what's really at the heart of Khadr's abandonment by Canada, as well as the Afghan war which has run virtually without protest from this country for a decade.
He might be guilty, but so are we. shame on us.
If you accept the Canadian official position on child soldiers he cannot by definition be guilty that is why this entire process is such a cruel joke.
And since the invasion/occupation of Afghanistan and the waging of that aggressive war, is itself a crime, it is the US and Canada's actions that are criminal, not Omar Khadr's for resisting it. Unfortunately, because the criminals are themselves in control of the legal process, there can be no justice. So Omar K stays in the Guantanamo hellhole and his name is scarcely mentioned.
Convicts break monotony with ... Shakespeare
The cellblock’s youngest is confessed teen terrorist Omar Khadr, 24, and he’s on the fast-track to freedom.
He pleaded guilty to war crimes last year in exchange for a promise to repatriate him before his 26th birthday. A military jury sentenced him to 40 more years in prison for hurling a grenade that killed an American commando in a July 2002 gun battle in war-time Afghanistan. But once back in Canada, Khadr’s parole is all-but certain because he was captured as a juvenile, 15 at the time of the crime.
At his sentencing hearing, a government paid psychiatrist said Khadr spent his years here “marinating in a radical Islamic community’’ — memorizing verses of the Quran in the company of captives who got to eat, pray, watch satellite TV and shoot hoops in groups as a reward for good behavior.
Now Khadr’s cut off from that group, as a war criminal segregated in circumstances his Army lawyer, Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, calls “horrific and stupid and don’t make any sense.’’
Khadr’s father, a since slain al Qaeda insider, moved the family from Toronto to Afghanistan when the boy was in elementary school. So to prepare him for life back in Canada, Khadr’s Pentagon defense team is shuttling twice a month to the remote base for attorney-client visits in a compound, Camp Echo.
There, for four days out of five military lawyers and paralegals are drilling Khadr on a home-school styled curriculum designed by a Canadian college professor — history, astronomy, math, grammar, elocution.
English is the emphasis, said Jackson, to help him achieve “mature student” status in Canada, a gateway to college admission.
Not so long ago, the al Qaeda convict played Romeo to the Army officer’s Juliet.
“He’s very serious about his education,’’ said Jackson. “His attitude is positive. There’s been a real change in him now that he has the legal matters behind him.”
To have had to endure what he has, and is still, as 'teen terrorist', and to have suffered so much at the hands of others... May the time come soon when his torments end, his life becomes his own, and he finds at long last a little peace and freedom.
Amen.
His father Ahmed was a mujahideen freedom fighter just like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ali Mohammed, Ahmed Shah Massud etc who were all supported by the USA from the 1980s through to the 2000s and continuing today as we observe with CIA "contractors" and NGOs linked to Pakistani Taliban and Qaeda terrorizing Pakistani civilians today.
It's absolutely crucial to the development of a coherent antiwar and human rights movement for the left to unveil the nature of Al CIA'da and its evolving relationship to successive US adminstrations in Warshington.
the US psychiatric establishment has long been an enthusiastic participant in the war on terror and an adjunct to US warmaking for even longer.
In fairness it should be said, as this webpage notes, that the American Psychological Associaltion has been deeply divided over the ethical issues surrounding the participation of psychologists in interrogation for several years.
True, but alas 'deeply divided' just means there's some that won't and more than enough that will..
Last time I checked, the Americal Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association (2 orgs with similar names - one for Psychiatrists and one for Psychologists) had conflicting and contrary views on what amounted to whitewashing torture in Git-Mo by the US regime.The Psychologists supported torture and the Psychiatrists opposed it. Or something like that.
Closed for length.