I'm going to shock some of my followers who know me to be conservative and Christian and come out on the side of the teen 'terrorist' Omar Khadr. Khadr is not being rewarded, he is being compensated for the 13 years of military imprisonment and torture he endured, all of which was against Canadian and international law.
Perhaps you think it is OK to torture children? Perhaps you think 14 and 15 y/o children are responsible for the situations in which they find themselves? You would have fit right in with the Rotherham police, social services and council. For decades they watched young British girls get sexually, physically, emotionally abused, even tortured by Pakistani adult men and did nothing.
In 16 years in that city which is considerably smaller than Abbotsford, B.C., 1400 young British girls were groomed, given drugs, alcohol, raped, gang-raped, and beaten while the police, social services and council turned a blind eye. Why did they turn a blind eye? Two reasons: 1) They didn't want to be seen as racist; 2) they told themselves that 11, 12, 13, 14 y/o girls were responsible for their own circumstances. They decided that little children were choosing to be gang-raped, kidnapped, beaten, and trafficked.
Omar Khadr had no more choice to be in the situation he was in than any of those 1400 young British girls. To hold him completely responsible and reject his remarkable confession and apology (which is not something you will ever get from a jihadist), puts us beneath him in dignity.
The Conservative Party, The Canadian Taxpayers Foundation, and many of my friends are, unfortunately, on the wrong side of this issue.
A guard watches over detainees in Camp IV in Camp Delta at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on July 8, 2010. Omar Khadr, captured in Afghanistan at the age of 15, spent several years in detention at Guantanamo Bay. File Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI | License Photo
UPI -- The Canadian government will give $8 million and an apology to a citizen accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan for abuses he endured while detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In 2002, U.S. special forces captured Khadr after a firefight with al-Qaida forces in southeast Afganistan. Khadr is suspected of throwing a grenade that killed Special Forces Sgt. Christopher Speer and injuring Sgt. Layne Morris.
A Canadian court ruled that because Omar Khadr was 15 years old at the time of the firefight, he should have been protected by Canada under international child soldier laws. Instead, the government conspired with the U.S. to convict and imprison Khadr. While in U.S. detention, Khadr was subjected to emotional and physical abuse, including beatings, threats of rape and being hogtied until he urinated on himself.
In all, Khadr spent 13 years in U.S. military detention before he was released in Canada on probation in May 2015.
How he survived that without being an extremely bitter young man, I cannot imagine. But he is not, and it is obvious.
Due to Khadr's age and international laws meant to protect child soldiers from normal war crime prosecutions, his case has drawn criticism.
In 2008, the United Nations Children's Fund said charging Khadr for war crimes, "in particular in front of a military commission not equipped to meet the required standards, would set a dangerous precedent for the protection of hundreds of thousands of children who find themselves unwittingly involved in conflict around the world," the agency said in a statement.
Morris, who lost vision in one eye from the grenade attack and has since retired form the military, spoke out against Khadr's release in 2015.
"This is a man who has demonstrated a willingness and a capability to do great harm to Canadian society and Western interests in general," he said at the time.
He was 15 years old, doing what his powerful father trained him to do. In a firefight, he was probably just trying to survive. There is a big difference here between terrorism and a military battle.
Khadr was raised in a militant family in Toronto, taught bombmaking and marksmanship by his father before the age of 12 and sent to Afghanistan to fight the U.S. military with his father and brothers when he was 14.
Now 30, he has expresses remorse for his actions in the war between al-Qaida and the United States.
"I'm sorry for the pain I've caused for the families of the victims," he told reporters after his 2015 release. "There's nothing I can do about the past but I can do something about the future."
Statement by the Conservative Party of Canada:
Meet Canada’s newest multi-millionaire – Omar Khadr.
Yes, that Omar Khadr – the admitted Al-Qaida terrorist who murdered US Army medic Christopher Speer with a grenade.
Can it be called murder in the midst of a firefight?
The same Omar Khadr who’s on video building improvised explosive devices exactly like the ones that killed and maimed countless serving Canadians.
When he was 14!
Now Justin Trudeau is reportedly giving this convicted terrorist a $10 million compensation package – and apologising to him.
Omar Khadr took the life of a husband and a father, and now the Liberal government wants to reward him with tens of millions of your dollars.
The language here is inflammatory and absurd. I despise the Liberal government as many of my blog-posts will attest, but in their defence, they are not rewarding Khadr for killing a husband and father. They are compensating him of 13 years of imprisonment and torture in a military prison, which was sanctified, if not participated in, by Canadian intelligence personnel.
Khadr is only alive today because of the medical treatment he received from US forces after killing one of their comrades, and now, thanks to Justin Trudeau, he will be one of the wealthiest men in Canada.
This is wrong.
Admitting to working with the same terrorist organisation that killed Canadians on September 11th doesn’t deserve an official apology from the Government of Canada.
More hyperbole and absurdity. The apology is for Canadian complicity in military detention and torture.
Killing our allies doesn’t deserve a $10 million pay day courtesy of the taxpayers of Canada.
Will you just stop! This is not worthy of a government-in-waiting? It's like something you would hear on Fox radio. Mr. Scheer, please don't take us down that road!
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