We should all get down on our knees and thank whatever God we worship that we live in a land ruled by law. This argument over a multi-million-dollar settlement and an apology for Omar Kadr is a disgrace. It is not a political decision. It is a legal settlement for years of torture and mistreatment for a child soldier who grew old in confinement.
Those Conservative hacks who are getting face time on television or their name in the paper as decrying the amount of the settlement are coming across as ignorant and bigoted.
You also need to recognize that Kadr’s lawyer deserves to be compensated for his many years of work for which he had little hope of ever seeing payment. He was breaking legal ground with a client who was the only child soldier to be charged for supposedly committing murder on a battlefield.
The very existence of the American prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was a direct avoidance of law by the American government. And all Americans bear the guilt for its excesses of cruelty.
It was at Guantanamo Bay that Kadr was taken before a kangaroo court and charged with the unusual crime of “murder in violation of the laws of war.” Just where such a strange law came from and who was responsible for it was never made clear.
On the basis that he could serve his sentence in Canada under international agreement, Kadr pleaded guilty.
The law suit that we hear has been settled in favour of Kadr, charges that under the Harper government, Canadian intelligence agents denied the young man his rights as a Canadian citizen. The Harper government also spent millions fighting the case in Canada’s Supreme Court. For there to be any more comment from former members of that government is just making them look stupider than they might be.
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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