The Unending Punishment of Former Guantánamo Prisoner Omar Khadr
by Andy Worthington
23.12.18
Khadr was a child — just 15 years old — when, gravely wounded, he was seized by US forces in July 2002 after a firefight in Afghanistan, where he had been taken by his father.
However, instead of treating him as a child who was not responsible for his own actions, and rehabilitating him, rather than punishing him, according to the terms of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflicts, which entered into force on February 12, 2002, and to which both the US and Canada are signatories, the US treated him appallingly, and, when Canadian agents were sent to Guantánamo to interview him, they failed to uphold his rights as a Canadian citizen.
The Canadian Supreme Court eventually delivered a powerful ruling regarding the violation of his rights, and, under Justin Trudeau, the government finally made amends for its behavior, paying him $10.5m in Canadian dollars (about $9m in US currency) in July 2017, following similar payments to other victims of Canada’s shameful post-9/11 behavior — a number of Canadian citizens of Syrian origin who were tortured in Syria (and in one case, that of Maher Arar, kidnapped in the US first, and then sent to Syria for torture) with the full collusion of the Canadian authorities.
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This decency regarding Omar Khadr only came about after protracted bad treatment by his home government, which refused to press for his release from Guantánamo, and, when he accepted a plea deal in his trial by military commission in October 2010, refused to bring him home promptly under the terms of that deal, which gave him one more year in Guantánamo followed by seven years’ further imprisonment in Canada.
In fact, it took nearly two years before he was returned to Canada, and, when he was returned, the Canadian authorities then held him for as long as possible in a maximum security prison, only relenting in August 2013 when, as I described it in 2014,
“Canada’s prison ombudsman Ivan Zinger, the executive director of the independent Office of the Correctional Investigator, said that prison authorities had ‘ignored favorable information’ in ‘unfairly branding’ Khadr as a maximum security inmate.”
In January 2014 he was moved to a medium security facility, and in April 2015 he was finally granted bail, moving in with his attorney Dennis Edney, who had cared for him for many years as though he was his own son.
On his 29th birthday, in September 2015, a judge eased his bail conditions, allowing him to visit his grandparents, and agreeing to have his electronic tag removed, and two years later, on his 31st birthday, he was allowed internet access, although bans remained on his ability to travel freely within Canada, or to meeting his sister Zainab, a controversial figure who, in the past, had expressed support for al-Qaeda. At the time she was reportedly living in Sudan with her fourth husband, but was planning a visit to Canada, but Justice June Ross, who is dealing with his bail conditions on an ongoing basis, “refused to remove restrictions stipulating” that he can “communicate with his sister in English only and in the presence of a court-appointed supervisor, his lawyers or bail supervisor,” as CBC News Edmonton described it.
This was despite the fact that Khadr, in a sworn affidavit, had pointed out,
“I am now an adult and I think independently. Even if the members of my family were to wish to influence my religious or other views, they would not be able to control or influence me in any negative manner.”
Now 32 years old, Khadr applied on December 13 for further changes to his bail conditions, requesting to be allowed to travel to Saudi Arabia to perform the hajj (which would require him to be given a passport), and to speak unsupervised with his sister, who is now living in Georgia.
Outside the court, he said,
“When I initially asked for bail, I didn’t expect it to take this long. My sentence initially should have ended this past October, but here I am.”
He added, “This is not the first time my life has been held in suspension. I am going to continue to fight this injustice and thankfully we have an actual court system that has actual rules and laws.”
He did, however complain that the Canadian government “has put this court in a position where it has to enforce a judgment and a ruling that was derived from torture, the same torture that the Canadian government has apologized for.”
His other long-term lawyer, Nathan Whitling, told Justice Ross, as the Canadian Press described it, that “his client has been a ‘model of compliance’ and should have his bail conditions loosened.” He said to the judge,
“There is still no end in sight. Mr. Khadr has now been out on bail so long and has an impeccable record. My goodness, when is this going to end?”
Whitling also pointed out that Khadr’s appeal against his conviction in the US, in which he has pointed out that he only agreed to a plea deal because he could see no other way of ever getting out of Guantánamo, “hasn’t ‘moved a single inch’ while his client has obeyed all the conditions of his release.”
Judge Ross reserved her decision until December 21, stating,
“There’s enough unprecedented aspects to this application that I’m going to take some time to think about it.”
The Edmonton Journal noted that, in the hearing, she explained that “there were two main issues at play in Khadr’s application to vary bail conditions: deleting five sections pertaining to travel and contact with his older sister Zaynab, and an application to allow his bail to be changed to parole.” The newspaper added, “Federal and provincial Crown prosecutors opposed the changes.”
Judge Ross also “acknowledged that Khadr has successfully reintegrated into the community, and that he has ‘excellent’ reporting habits when it comes to notifying his bail supervisor about changes in residence, employment or travel.” She also pointed out that he had “moved into his own home in 2016, and began living with his wife the next year,” following a marriage that was deliberately kept low-key.
However, the court also received a report submitted by a psychologist who stated that “the conditions on his movement and contact with his sister were ‘exacerbating’ his post-traumatic stress disorder and making it difficult for him to move on with his life.”
However, Judge Ross evidently ignored this assessment, and ultimately turned down Khadr’s requests. As the Associated Press described it, she ruled that there was “no evidence of hardship or conditions that are needlessly onerous,” although she did acknowledge that his feelings about being in what he described as “legal limbo” were “understandable.” The Edmonton Journal added that she “also said her decision is not ‘etched in stone’ and that Khadr’s lawyer could apply to change his bail conditions in the future.”
As the Edmonton Journal described it, “She acknowledged Khadr’s desire to complete the hajj … but said that he as yet has no firm plans to make the journey.” She also that, in future, Khadr “could apply to the court to allow him to apply for a passport to make the trip, which would then be surrendered to his bail supervisor.”
Outside the court, Khadr “declined to comment” on the ruling, while Nathan Whitling “said they would review the application and consider their next steps.”
Over half his lifetime since the fateful day that he ended up in US custody in July 2002, Omar Khadr’s long journey to freedom still has no end in sight. If the eight years of his sentence are over, why do Canadian officials continue to impose so many obstacles to his ability to live freely and to travel freely?
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (click on the following for Amazon in the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US), and for his photo project ‘The State of London’ he publishes a photo a day from six years of bike rides around the 120 postcodes of the capital.
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of a new documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, the resistance continues.
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Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
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