CBC reports this hour, “Omar Khadr, who has been in a U.S. detention camp since October 2002 following his capture by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is on his way to Canada from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to serve the balance of his sentence. A military plane with Khadr on board left the U.S. Naval base on Cuba’s southeast shore around 4:30 a.m. ET Saturday, according to a military source.”
This is long overdue and comes after both an April 2009 Federal Court of Canada ruling asking the Harper government to seek the repatriation of Khadr, and a January 2010 Supreme Court of Canada ruling stating that Harper should act to ‘rectify Mr. Khadr’s plight’.
In June 2007, Maude Barlow, Alex Neve and Roch Tasse wrote in the Ottawa Citizen, “By not insisting that Omar Khadr be treated in accordance with the full range of his basic human rights, the Canadian government is indicating that it is willing to trade away rights for the sake of making friends in Washington. It is time for Canada to speak out about Guantanamo Bay, and advocate more forcefully on behalf of Omar Khadr. If there is one file where the U.S. government needs to be pressed by Canada to restore the protection of fundamental human rights, this is it. The silence must come to an end.” That op-ed is at http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=3274ce88-3079-4a21-9948-e3a909e6e476&sponsor=.
Council of Canadians blogs on this are at http://canadians.org/blog/?s=khadr.
