Saturday August 25, 2007, 12:59 pm
Canadian Omar Khadr, accused killer of a U.S. soldier, faces U.S. military trial as an adult at Guantanamo Bay
Peter McKnight, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, August 25, 2007
Omar Khadr is not easy to defend, and not just because he keeps firing his lawyers.

The scion of Canada's first family of terrorism, Khadr is accused of lobbing a grenade that killed U.S. Army Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer in 2002. He was captured shortly after and sent to the notorious American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he remains to this day, awaiting trial before a reconstituted U.S. military commission.

A hulking, bearded, 20-year-old "graduate" of an al-Qaida training camp, Khadr certainly seems the epitome of an unrepentant Islamic terrorist. And maybe he is.

Saturday August 25, 2007, 12:59 pm
Still, some intrepid individuals and groups have taken it upon themselves to speak on Khadr's behalf. Notwithstanding how they're portrayed in certain quarters, not all of them are bleeding heart, left-wing, Bush-bashing, anti-American wingnuts.

Some, like Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler, a U.S. military lawyer charged with representing Khadr, have spent their lives serving under the U.S. commander-in-chief, which is more than most armchair critics who lob accusations of anti-Americanism will ever do.

Nevertheless, Kuebler thought the issue important enough to chastise Canada, at the recent Canadian Bar Association conference, for doing nothing about Khadr. Detailing the appalling -- and quite frankly, illegal -- treatment of "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo, Kuebler encouraged the CBA to condemn Canada for its inaction on the Khadr file.

Kuebler's uncompromising words -- which received a standing ovation at the conference -- led the CBA to send a hastily drafted letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper demanding that Khadr be released into Canadian custody to face due process under Canadian law.

Such a move wouldn't be unprecedented, since both the British and Australian governments have successfully lobbied the U.S. to repatriate their Guantanamo-incarcerated nationals. In fact, Khadr is now the only western national still imprisoned in the Cuban bastille, and the only one destined to face a quasi-legal military commission.

Yet all this talk about the deprivation of rights in Guantanamo, although not beside the point, serves to obscure the main point of the case -- that Khadr was, at the time of his alleged offence, a child.

"It is unprecedented to try a child for war crimes," Kuebler told the CBA. And indeed it is: Of all the international tribunals presiding over war crimes trials, none has prosecuted children under 18. Not the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, not the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and not the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which has jurisdiction over those aged 15 and older but has decided not to exercise it in the case of juveniles.

I can't mention Sierra Leone here without also mentioning Ishmael Beah, a name that has become synonymous with the unspeakable brutality of Sierra Leone's civil war. Beah, a Brooklyn-based writer, and the toast of the literary world thanks to his bestselling memoir A Long Way Gone, is a killer.

Saturday August 25, 2007, 1:00 pm
But not just a "one off" killer like Khadr is accused of being. Beah, by his own admission, is a mass murderer, responsible for killing "too many people to count." He joined the so-called national army of Sierra Leone when he was 13, and within two years, had become a seasoned killer.

Yet Beah was viewed as a victim as international law demands, and never faced trial. Instead, he was rescued by the United Nations when he was 15, counselled and placed in foster care in the United States, the country in which he is now celebrated and which continues to view Khadr as a vicious terrorist who must be denied even the basic legal rights accorded to virtually any accused adult in any Western country.

Despite this differential treatment, Khadr's experience seems similar to Beah's and to that of child soldiers the world over. According to the U.S. government, his father introduced him to al-Qaida leaders at the age of 10, and then placed him in a terrorist training camp at 15. Shortly after, the fateful and fatal firefight with U.S. forces occurred, which led to the current situation

Saturday August 25, 2007, 1:01 pm
Even more striking than the differential treatment of Beah and Khadr is the startling contrast between Canadian and American attitudes toward Khadr and their attitudes toward child soldiers generally. Both countries were leaders in the drafting and adoption of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires parties to the protocol to provide assistance for the physical and psychological recovery of child soldiers and to facilitate their social reintegration.

Similarly, the "Paris Principles," which Canada and the U.S. support, states that child soldiers "should be considered primarily as victims of offences against international law," and calls on states to emphasize restorative justice and social rehabilitation when dealing with underage combatants. This doesn't mean the child soldiers can't be held responsible for their actions; it only means that rehabilitation and reintegration must take precedence.

And Canada and the U.S. pay more than just lip service to these Principles and to the Protocol. According to Human Rights Watch, both countries have provided millions of dollars to aid in the rehabilitation and reintegration of child soldiers in Afghanistan.

Since 2001, the U.S. has donated $34 million to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers and to demobilize and reintegrate those who have already been recruited. And after some initial resistance, the U.S. released three underage Guantanamo detainees to the care of their families in Afghanistan.

Despite all of this, the U.S. is adamant that Khadr be treated as an adult and face a military commission, and Canada is adamant that . . . well, Canada isn't adamant about anything, and that's precisely the problem.

Some supporters of Khadr's imprisonment and impending trial point to the fact that he is now a hulking 20-year-old. But American, Canadian and international law all agree that what matters is the age of an offender when the offence was committed, not his age when he is tried.

Saturday August 25, 2007, 1:02 pm
In other words, it matters not a whit that Khadr is now a man -- chronologically and biologically if not emotionally and intellectually -- for this is what child soldiers become. They become men -- always damaged, but, if the conditions are right, as they were in the case of Ishmael Beah, then also, sometimes, redeemed. And if the conditions are wrong, as they were, and are, in the case of Omar Khadr, then quite possibly beyond redemption.

But just as Khadr must be held responsible for his actions, so too must we be held responsible for our inaction. And the Khadr case, unfortunately, speaks more to our dismal prospects for redemption than it does his.

pmcknight@png.canwest.com

Saturday August 25, 2007, 1:03 pm
Child recruitment has to be one of the most evil things in this world. So many are damaged beyond redemption, however the idea of locking them away, without giving them a chance at psychiatric help is unthinkable. It makes us no better than the recruiters.

Sunday August 26, 2007, 2:47 am
Why is it a crime for a person to kill a U.S. soldier, and not a crime for a U.S. soldier to kill an Iraqi soldier, Afghani soldier, or any of the many civilians that U.S. forces have killed?

Until there is equality in the application of such murder laws, then the U.S. legal system is no more than another tool for U.S. imperialism.

One more thing: I am impressed by much of this article, though it certainly doesn't go far enough in exposing the hypocrisy of U.S. imperialism and the Orwellian "war on terror".... Also, the Vancouver Sun's nature as a media corporation can be seen even more clearly in its denigration of us compassionate, left-wing, dedicated critics of Bush and U.S. imperialism, as "bleeding heart, left-wing, Bush-bashing, anti-American wingnuts." That is the way of the ideology (capitalism) that is bankrupt when it comes to refuting what we say. Capitalist ideology cannot refute the wisdom of what we say (e.g. that there is poverty because the capitalist system allows a minority to own and control most of the world's wealth and use that wealth in selfish ways), so the capitalist media will almost never not repeat what we say, and all capitalism can do is try to stop us by slandering us, censoring us, threatening us, using violence against us, and so on.

Sunday September 2, 2007, 12:03 pm
"Why is it a crime for a person to kill a U.S. soldier, and not a crime for a U.S. soldier to kill an Iraqi soldier, Afghani soldier, or any of the many civilians that U.S. forces have killed? "

That is exactly what I wish someone would explain to me, Simon! It makes no sense whatsoever!