Daily Archive

The CBC reports about the systematic injustice being perpetrated on Omar Khadr:

“Threats of gang rape did not prompt Omar Khadr to make any self-incriminating statements and no evidence exists that the Canadian citizen was tortured, the military judge in his Guantanamo Bay war-crimes trial said in a decision released Friday.

In his nine-page written ruling, Col. Patrick Parrish states Khadr’s confessions to his interrogators are reliable and were made voluntarily.”

Shorter:  We decided that we did not torture you nor did we coerce you in any way.  We are impartial and just because we say so.

“Among other things, Khadr’s lawyers cited evidence from one interrogator, who told the badly wounded 15-year-old about the gang-raping to death of an unco-operative inmate.

“There is no evidence that story caused the accused to make any incriminating statements then or in the future,” Parrish said.”

Nah, threats of being gang-raped to death will certainly not have any effect on a 15 year old.  He is after all a hardened terrorist that needs to be dealt with as severely as possible.  Perhaps we should add “threat of gang-rape” to all of our security forces manual of how to interrogate prisoners.

“On the contrary, the judge found, there was “credible evidence” that Khadr began giving statements after American soldiers discovered a seemingly damning digital video.

The video was discovered in the rubble of the compound where American forces captured Khadr, who had been shot twice and blinded by shrapnel, in July 2002.

Among other things, the video shown at his trial last week appears to show Khadr making and planting improvised explosive devices.

“While the accused was 15 years old at the time he was captured, he was not immature for his age,” Parrish said. “The accused had sufficient training, education and experience to understand the circumstances in which he found himself.”

Yes, he was in a War Zone and he was fighting invaders that were occupying his his father’s homeland, and through the teachings of his father (however misguided they were) he went out to defend his country.  We do not allow 15 year olds to smoke, drink, vote or even quit school.  Yet the judge in question has decided that at 15 Mr.Khadr was fully responsible for his actions in the theatre of war.   We kill innocents all the time with no repercussions and little reparations, but for Mr.Khadr the full weight of Military Justice is called for.

“One of Khadr’s Canadian lawyers, Nate Whitling, took a jaundiced view of Parrish’s findings.

“Apparently he was listening to different evidence than the rest of us,” Whitling told The Canadian Press on Friday.”

Evidence?  Like it has any bearing in this sham of a trial.  Prosecuting child soldiers as full fledged combatants is ludicrous and should have been a non starter.  Apparently not.  That standards we set for our young people do not apply once you are an official enemy.