8.12.2007

a quarter of his life in a concentration camp

What can possibly be gained from incarcerating this man any longer? Hasn't he paid long enough for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for being raised by people with beliefs the US feels threatens its hegemony?
The last time Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler saw his client Omar Khadr, the only things the Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted were some crayons and paper.

It was an insight into the deteriorating, child-like mental state of the 20-year-old Canadian and the only Westerner still locked up at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, who has now spent a quarter of his life incarcerated on terrorism charges, he said.

Kuebler, a U.S. military lawyer assigned to Khadr's defence four months ago, was at the Canadian Bar Association conference yesterday to urge the country's largest legal organization to take up Khadr's cause, much as law societies in Australia and Great Britain have done for other Guantanamo detainees.

He was met with a standing ovation by members of the organization's governing council – and a vow from its outgoing president to work to end the "travesty of justice" confronting a Canadian citizen.

"I think it's time for all Canadians to be speaking out to end this horrendous lack of due process," president Parker MacCarthy told reporters at a news conference immediately after Kuebler's remarks. Parker said he's confident the association will support efforts to lobby Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

While the Canadian government continues to affirm its faith that Khadr will be well-treated by his jailers and the U.S. military commission assigned to hear his case, Kuebler noted the Australian government arranged to have one of its citizens, David Hicks, returned home under a plea arrangement after growing public concern in that country about the lack of due process at U.S. terrorism tribunals.

Khadr is being made to pay "for the sins of his father," Ahmed, who had ties to Osama bin Laden, and recruited and indoctrinated his son from the age of 10, said Kuebler, adding his client – just 15 when he was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 – was a "child soldier."

While the Canadian government has condemned the use of child soldiers elsewhere, it stands by while one of its own citizens deteriorates in solitary confinement, he said. [Emphasis added.]

In light of what we always suspected - and now know for sure - about Maher Arar's ordeal, how can the Canadian government "continue to affirm its faith" in the US system? How can we let them?

Here's Human Rights First's brief on Khadr's story. No bleeding-heart treehuggers, they: the Board of Directors includes attorneys from the some of the oldest, most conservative law firms in the US (some of which are former employers of mine). Conservative isn't supposed to mean disregarding justice and human rights.

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