Monday November 30, 2015
By: Ben Spurr
Omar Khadr speaks to media after his bail hearing in Edmonton on Sept. 11.
The federal Liberals are reconsidering the government’s position on Omar Khadr’s case and may not fight the ruling that let the former Guantanamo Bay prisoner go free earlier this year, according to his lawyer.
Khadr spent 13 years behind bars for his role in a firefight in Afghanistan that left a U.S. soldier dead, but has been free since May, when an Alberta judge granted him bail.
At the time of his release, the Conservative government of the day condemned the ruling and vowed to appeal it. But according to Khadr’s longtime attorney, Dennis Edney, the government has since requested that the deadline for submitting appeal arguments be delayed. Edney said the reason government lawyers sought the delay is that they were considering whether to oppose Khadr’s bail.
“Cabinet hadn’t been put together and given time to consider what it wants to do,” Edney explained in an interview with the Star.
According to Ian McLeod, a spokesman for the justice department, following the bail decision this spring, department lawyers and Khadr’s attorneys “presented a joint agreement to the Alberta Court of Appeal to extend filing timelines for appeal.”
McLeod confirmed that the appeal deadline had been extended until February 2016 but wouldn’t confirm when attorneys had sought the delay. He also didn’t say why the government had agreed to push back the deadline. But he noted that newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tasked Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould with “reviewing the government’s litigation strategy.”
“It would be premature to speculate on how that review may impact specific cases,” he said.
The justice minister has already dropped one of her Conservative predecessors’ controversial legal crusades by ending the government’s opposition to the ruling that allowed women to wear the Muslim face veil during citizenship ceremonies.
Since his release, Khadr has been living with Edney’s family in their Edmonton home. Edney told the Star that the delay only strengthens his client’s case, because the basis for the government’s appeal is that Khadr poses a risk to the public.
“He can’t be much of a risk since the government wishes to allow him to continue to live in the community while it decides whether to prosecute or not,” he said.
Asked whether he was optimistic the Liberal government would drop the case, Edney replied: “If common sense was to prevail, then this government would withdraw their application. If they don’t, then I look forward to taking them on as I’ve done every case the last 10 years.”
Edney reported that Khadr is “doing well” outside of prison, and is attending university as well as taking “ambulance courses.”
“He’s using his time in a most productive and progressive manner,” he said.
For years, Khadr’s story has sharply divided Canadians. Born in Toronto in 1986, his father had ties to the Taliban and moved the family to Afghanistan in 1996. In 2002, at the age of 15, Khadr was shot and captured during a firefight with U.S. and Afghan forces and accused of throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer, an American medic.
He was taken to the notorious U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in 2010 pleaded guilty to war crimes at a controversial U.S. military commission. Two years later he was transferred to a Canadian prison to serve out his eight-year sentence.
He has since recanted his guilty plea and said he doesn’t know whether he killed Sgt. Speer. He is appealing his conviction by the U.S. military commission, and was granted bail pending the outcome of that decision.
Under Stephen Harper, the federal government did its best to keep him behind bars and out of the country. When Khadr was granted bail, Conservative public safety minister Steven Blaney issued a statement that said Khadr had committed “heinous crimes” and decried the fact that “a convicted terrorist has been allowed back into Canadian society.”
Justin Trudeau has taken a much softer stance on Khadr. In May, before being elected prime minister, he told a Vancouver radio station that “Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen, who as such deserves the protection of the Canadian judicial system.” Trudeau also accused Harper of “trying to make political hay” out of Khadr’s case.