Of all the prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay, few have received the kind of intense political discussion and extensive media coverage that Omar Khadr has.
In 2002, Khadr was accused of killing U.S. Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, a combat medic, during a skirmish in Afghanistan. He was captured, linked to al-Qaeda, and detained at the ripe old age of 15. For the past decade, Khadr has been depicted as everything from a vicious child terrorist to a political martyr. It’s little wonder some American and Canadian observers have expressed confusion about the question of Khadr’s guilt for so long.
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The issue will soon reach a new boiling point. In October 2010, Khadr finally admitted his guilt in Speer’s brutal death. As part of the plea agreement, he would spend one more year at Guantanamo Bay and then be sent back to his native country, Canada. Khadr’s lawyers have reportedly started the repatriation process, so it’s only a matter of time before he’s no longer America’s problem — and becomes Canada’s.
Ezra Levant, a lawyer, political pundit, and TV host, is one of many Canadians who would rather not see Khadr come back. His new book, The Enemy Within: Terror, Lies, and the Whitewashing of Omar Khadr(McClelland & Stewart, 264 pp., $27.99), is a well-researched and highly readable account of the last Western prisoner at Guantanamo. Refusing to accept conventional wisdom, Levant systematically breaks down the myth that many of Khadr’s left-wing supporters have constructed about their hero. The picture he paints is shocking — and should make even some of his most ardent supporters think again.
How did a 15-year-old kid get involved with a terrorist organization? He grew up in Toronto, a large Canadian city renowned for its cultural diversity. His maternal grandparents, Mohamed and Elsamnah, ran a bakery on Eglinton Avenue, which is (in Levant’s words) “one of the most ethnically diverse strips of commerce in North America,” and were reportedly happy with their new life in Canada. The starting point for Khadr’s problem appears to be his parents, who, writesLevant,“hated Canada” and “wanted their citizenship for just one thing: as a convenient tool they could exploit to promote criminal Islamic jihad.” His father, Ahmed, raised money under the guise of charitable contributions from unsuspecting mosques and funneled it “to jihadists overseas so they could build bombs and buy guns to murder infidels.” Khadr’s older brother even told the CBC in 2005, “I admit it that we are an al-Qaeda family.” Ahmed had connections with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man who would become Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command, going back as far as 1986.
While the virulent hatred the young Khadr developed for Western democracy and liberty started at home, he worked hard to keep feeding the beast. He met regularly with al-Qaeda leaders (as his father reportedly moved up to fourth-in-command) and visited training camps. He was trained, reports Levant, “in poisons and assassinations,” became “a pro with explosives,” and “learned how to spy, to calculate troop movements and plan attacks on them, to sabotage, [and] to select targets” — in short, he was “the prince of al-Qaeda, grooming himself to become an Islamic crime boss like his father.”
Omar Khadr’s supporters want you to think that he was a victim of circumstance, a child soldier brainwashed and forced into a horrible life. But Levant makes clear that Khadr doesn’t fit the profile of child soldiers, who are “virtual slaves compelled under duress to do things they could never otherwise imagine doing, and desperate to escape.” Rather, he “considered himself a terrorist,” and that’s how we should regard him.
So, why is Canada taking back Khadr? Sadly, the will is there to bring him back home. “The Omar Khadr Fan Club” (as one of the book’s chapters is titled) includes the liberal media, two previous Liberal governments under Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, and a majority of the Canadian public. Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which has been tough on crime since being elected in 2006 and “which had for years so vigorously fought off court challenges to compel them to bring Khadr back to Canada,” did the unthinkable and agreed to let him back in.
It’s pretty clear that Canada is doing President Barack Obama a favor by taking Khadr off his plate. While the Conservatives can go back on their word — and, in my opinion, should — they likely won’t. And a dangerous terrorist will soon be back within Canada’s borders.
— Michael Taube is a Toronto-based columnist for the Ottawa Citizen, and a former speechwriter for Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.
I guess it's good to be getting rid of your long gun registry if you're going to let a terrorist nut job into your country.
Seriously, we have 35 of our own terrorist cells operating in the U.S. and our federal government is sending out lunch box inspectors to keep us safe from incomplete lunches for kindergarteners. Are we in better shape than Canada? At least their corporate taxes are lower, and they're allowed to drill for oil.
In all cases of terrorists walking among us it appears to be the liberal politicians and their lackeys who are causing all the trouble.
There is no serious discussion by Levant about the circumstances of Omar Khadr's confession, specifically about how it was obtained, how it was allowed into the court system, or why Omar offered his "confession" in a plea deal when he did.
First, what has come to be known as Omar Khadr's confession was obtained under coercion, torture, and threats of rape and death. More details: Omar was held and interrogated, first, at Bagram AFB, Afghanistan and shortly thereafter at Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the same interrogator at both camps, Joshua Claus, a man who was charged, convicted, and imprisoned for the torture death of another Bagram AFB prisoner after only five days in captivity, a man named Dilawar, (death ruled homicide by US pathologists in Germany, legs "pulpified," equivalent to being run over by a bus). After serving a short stint for that stunt, he was transferred to Gitmo where he continued with Omar. The interrogations were somewhat similar: Dilawar was told that unless he cooperated, he would be put with the general prison population and "treated like a woman." But to the 15 or 16 year-old-boy at the time, he told a fictitious story about another Afghan boy who was put into the general prison population when he did not cooperate, a place where "men are 'criminals but still patriotic, and the boy was raped in the showers by three big, black men," and then he ends his story by saying, "I think the boy died." That coercion and threats of rape and death were used with Omar Khadr is well-documented and easily available online, even including official documents and court transcripts; one need only begin with the 30+ pages at Wikipedia and follow some of the 200+ references.
Obviously, at preliminary hearings and the trial itself, Omar Khadr's attorneys did not want that "confession" allowed because of how it was gotten, but it was allowed by the military officer serving as judge in the kangaroo court system because as the officer said, "Omar was not immature for his age." Omar's confession was allowed.
So facing a life sentence for the killing of Special Ops soldier, Christopher Speer, and for having the opportunity for a reduced sentence and repatriation to Canada to finish his sentence, the "confession" was offered in a plea-bargain deal. To call Omar Khadr a "dangerous, convicted terrorist" under that type of a "confession" is hardly an accurate description.
Finally, there is photographic evidence that shows Omar Khadr probably could not have physically thrown the grenade that killed Christopher Speer. Note that the Wikipedia report shows a lot of confusion and conflicting recollections of the timetable during which incidents occurred, but an initial firefight was followed by bombing, then followed by "cleanup" when things had quieted down (and when Christopher Speer was not wearing his helmet at the time), which is when he was killed by a tossed grenade. The photos at External Link show Omar Khadr buried beneath rubble, which, when cleared, show he had already sustained severe bullet wound injuries that would made him incapable of physically throwing the grenade that killed Christopher Speer.
In sum, we can, and should, mourn the death of Special Ops soldier and medic, Christopher Speer. But (1) the illegal detention of the then 15-year-old child soldier, now age 25, (2) a deeply flawed interrogation process, and (3) an equally flawed kangaroo court "trial" is not justice, nor does it resemble justice.
Levant is on the wrong side of the issues surrounding Omar Khadr.
Confession or no, one fact is irrefutable. He stormed out of a basement with our enemies who killed Spears. If our troops had simply put three rounds in his chest instead of taking him prisoner, we would not be having this conversation. My dad was a marine on Iwo Jima. They knew how to take care of prisoners.
Unfortunately Omar Khadr is a Canadian born citizen, so he has to stay, but behind bars for life. His parents, who helped financially Hezbollah and Hamas are not originally from CA so they must be expelled. The law must be applied, and stop this "charities" with people that brings hate and terrorism to a country that welcomes everyone. I think Canadian laws should be updated, as Omar Khandr story might not be the only one. We already had the Shafia case, so why do we have to feed and taking care of them in our cells? If they do not appreciate to have been accepted here and behave unlawfully, it's better for us and even for them to go back home permanently. We receive thousands of immigrants, most well behaved and thankful for the opportunity they have, Canada should stress that difference, expelling the murderous ones out.
