2,545 Days: Bring Omar Khadr Home
A rally was organized outside the citizenship office in Toronto to keep Omar Khadr’s case in the media spotlight, and ensure that he is not forgotten.
Bting Omar Khadr Back to Canada
Canadian citizen Omar Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured on July 27, 2002, by US forces in Ayub Khey, Afghanistan. Now 21 years old, Omar has been in US custody ever since.
Omar Khadr’s case is unique for the following reasons:
1) Omar is the first person in modern history to face a military commission for alleged crimes committed as a child.
2) He is the youngest prisoner held in extrajudicial detention by the United States.
3) Canada has refused to seek extradition or repatriation despite the urgings of Amnesty International, UNICEF, Lawyers Against the War, Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, the Canadian Bar Association and many Canadian jurists, social justice advocates and Members of Parliament.
4) Omar is the only Western citizen who still remains in Guantanamo Bay.
Source: www.BringOmarHome.ca
Protesters brought unfurled a banner counting the 2,545 days that Omar has spent locked up.
At Guantanamo Bay prison US officials have held Omar “virtually incommunicado” — no access to outsiders and in solitary confinement for over 3 years. Omar was not permitted any contact with a lawyer until November 2004, more than two years after being captured.
US Armed Forces personnel have subjected Omar, throughout his imprisonment to a variety of illegal treatments. Reported abuses to which he has been subjected include:
- not informed of his rights
- short shackled — wrists and ankles tied together and the cuffs bolted to the floor
- his hands tied above a door frame for hours
- had cold water thrown on him
- had a bag placed over his head and was threatened with military dogs
- forced to perform painful exercises while short shackled
- threatened with forced nakedness
- forced to urinate on himself while in stress positions
- detained illegally and illegally held incommunicado, except for the November 2004 visit from a lawyer
- kept in solitary confinement
- forced into stress positions for periods of hours, e.g. forced to lie on his stomach with hands and feet cuffed together behind his back
- forced to provide involuntary statements
- forced to sit, during interrogations, on an extremely cold floor
- had his body dragged back and forth, while short shackled, through the urine and pine oil in order to clean the floor with his body
- repeatedly lifted and dropped while short shackled as a punishment for ‘poor performance’
- threatened with rape/sexual violence
- refused opportunity to say prayers
- held in a cell that is ‘freezing cold’ 24 hours a day that Omar says is causing him shortness of breath and the sensation of not being able to get enough oxygen
- exposed to continuous electric light in his cell
- he has found partially dissolved tablets and/or powder at the bottom of a glass given to him by his captors. He says the pills produce various effects such as sleepiness, dizziness, alertness
- being denied adequate medical treatment
- left bound in uncomfortable stress positions until he soiled himself
source: Omar Khadr: The Continuing Scandal of Illegal Detention and Torture by US Forces in Guantanamo Bay
The banner counting the 2,545 days that Omar has spent locked up went all the way down the street.
Omar has now spent over a third of his life in the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. Canada is the only Western government to refuse to request the repatriation of one of its citizens from Guantanamo.
On March 23 the House of Commons passed a motion calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to request Omar’s repatriation. On April 23 the federal court ruled that the Canadian government must act immediately to repatriate Omar. It is now the will of a majority of Parliamentarians, all three opposition parties and a growing majority of Canadians that Omar be brought home.
counting the 2,545 days that Omar Khadr has been locked up
Shaanaz Gokool, of Amnety International, addressed the rally saying:
“Increasingly disturbing to Amnesty International has been the fundamental lack of protection and the complicity of the Canadian government. That due to our government’s actions, or inaction, [Omar Khadr has] been tortured by foreign security services. … We ask today, where has the rule of law in Canada gone? [This is] not about undermining the legitimacy of foreign governments, or the Canadian courts interfering with foreign affairs; this is about the role of our government and the value of Canadian citizenship. Why do we have to rely on the Canadian courts to demand that our own government treat all of our citizens with the same protection and concern for their human rights. It is not acceptable to assist some citizens and virtually abandon others in the face of ongoing human rights concerns. Our government needs to deal with the reality that they are accountable for truth, justice, and due process to all Canadian citizens…
counting the 2,545 days that Omar Khadr has been locked up
Shaanaz Gokool contintued:
“…As we stand here today and count off all the ticks accross here [on the banner] that represent each day young Omar Khadr has been detained by the US government to today’s date. We are forced to acknowledge, with this powerful visualization, that this has gone on for far too long and enough is enough!
How many days will I be detained by a foreign nation state before the Canadian government intercedes on my behalf? How many days will you be detained before the Canadian government comes to your aid? How many instances of torturemust I endure, instances that our Canadian governemnt knows that I have endured, before my government comes to my aid? These are the questions we must all ask ourselves, it is a long over-due discussion that needs to happen in every home in our country. What is the value of Canadian citizenship, if our own government will not protect our human rights when we are abroad?
counting the 2,545 days that Omar Khadr has been locked up
Shaanaz Gokool continued
“Omar Khadr forces us to take a hard took at who we are as Canadian citizens and to demand that the Canadian government do better by us. Omar Khadr is not a random person who has been detained by the US authorities for the past seven years — Omar Khadr is a Canadian. He is you, he is me, and he is all of us, and he is a benchmark for how we expect to be protected, or not, by our Canadian government. Amnesty International calls on the Canadian governemnt to reclaim our position on the worlds’ stage as a human rights defender. Charity, they say, begins at home. Bring Omar Khadr home!”
James Loney, of the Christian Peacemakers Team, addresses the rally
James Loney, who was once held hostage while doing humanitarian work in Iraq before being rescued in a daring raid by multinational forces, also raised questions about why “some citizens get help, others don’t”, citing the cases of Brenda Martin, who was imprisoned in Mexico before being brought home by the Canadian government, and Abousfian Abdelrazik, who was left in Sudan for six years before finally returning home to Canada this month. “There seems to be two standards of citizenship” Loney concluded.
“I was a Canadian citizen who was in trouble abroad, I went to Baghdad on a peace delegation, contrary to a travel advisory, and unbeknownst to me at the time, our government mobilized vast resources to assist my family to try and secure my release and sent a team to Baghdad … and I was astounded, amazed, I had no idea that the government would do this for me, that I would be claimed in this way.
“…and it really angers me that there are two standards of citizenship. What is it based on, is it colour of skin, or if you were born in Canada or somewhere else, or your last name, or your religion, or what? What is it? Why do some citizens merit the protection of the charter and others do not? In my view, and I think in the view of most Canadians, there is no such thing as second-class citizenship, or a two-tier citizenship. A citizen is a citizen is a citizen! And if we allow even one of us, even one of us, to have our rights trampled upon and abused and neglected, then we are all at risk. And we can’t allow that to happen to anyone.”
Professor Audrey Macklin, part of Omar Khadr's defence team speaks at the rally
Professor Audrey Macklin:
“The last couple of years I’ve had the privilege of working with Omar Khadr’s US Military Defense Council, who has been representing Omar Khadr before the military commissions…
“Omar Khadr was 15 years old when he was captured. A 15 year old who has been detained for seven years without charge, in conditions that amount to torture and cruel and unusual and degrading treatment. Does the fact that he has parents who are pariahs, or that he happened to be somebody who is a minority religion, or that he is being detained by Canada’s biggest ally, are those reasons that justify what otherwise I think we would all immediately and obviously regard as totally unacceptable?
counting the 2,545 days that Omar Khadr has been locked up
Professor Audrey Macklin continued:
“It shouldn’t be necessary to talk about the particular allegations against Omar Khadr … but nevertheless, the Harper government counts on the allegations against Omar Khadr and aspects of his identity and relationships and his familial history to somehow erase from peoples’ minds his status as a Canadian citizen, if not his identity as a human being. So let me just say a couple of words about these allegations, although I repeat it shouldn’t be necessary to do so: Omar Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade at a US soldier in the course of a battle.
“When I started working on this case, I was willing to take as given that maybe that happened. Only since that time have I learned that the evidence that he threw a grenade is, in fact, severely compromised. It initially came from a report written by a US soldier present at the battle who later admitted that the initial report he wrote identified somebody else as throwing the grenade, not Omar Khadr, and that that report was actually changed afterwards to identify Omar Khadr as the culprit. Why? Because the other person was summarily executed on the battlefield. Subsequently, and only years after Omar Khadr’s detention, was it possible for defence council to commission an expert who could examine the shell fragments that were found in the body of the deceased US soldier, only to discover that there might be reason to believe that the grenade that killed him was friendly fire, because it was more consistent with grenades fragments from a US made grenade, rather than Soviet/Russian-made grenades…
counting the 2,545 days that Omar Khadr has been locked up
Professor Audrey Macklin continued:
“Something else about Omar Khadr: he has never been tried. All of the allegations against him, after seven years or a third of his life, remain as mere allegations. These are things that seem to have slipped from notice. A last point about the facts: one of the scare tactics, I think, that the Harper government has used to justify its inertia on this case is that ‘well, what are we gonna do with him? We can’t try him for a crime when he gets back here and, my gosh, we can’t have this man walking the streets!’
“Well whatever one makes of that kind of claim, you should know that his defense council and others ahve worked hard to prepare a program of reintegration and rehabilitation for Omar Khadr if and when he comes back to Canada. Knowing that, if not his life before capture, surely his life after capture; seven years in virtual solitary confinement, as a youth with no access to education, psychological treatement, anything that could be regarded as age-appropriate treatment, surely have left somebody who is profoundly damaged. But know that his has been taken into account, and that people have given long and hard thought to what to be done that would make Omar Khadr’s reintegration and rehabilitation possible…
counting the 2,545 days that Omar Khadr has been locked up
Professor Audrey Macklin continued:
“You may think that you don’t face the same risks as Omar Khadr, because he may be a Canadian citizen but hey, if you get in trouble abroad, well, you got a different profile than Omar Khadr. And it’s true that the Canadian government takes the position that it holds no obligation to any Canadian citizen, not just no obligation to Omar Khadr, but no obligation to any of us. So you may think that ‘ah that’s ok if I get in trouble, the Canadian government will come to my aid because, afterall, I’m not likely to do the things that Omar Khadr is alleged to have done, and I kinda look different, I kinda sound different.’
“Well are you willing to take that gamble? More importantly, should the rule of law be a crapshoot? Should your human rights depend on whether at a particular moment in time the government of Canada likes the way you look or sound or likes what it knows about you? The rule of law is not a gamble, human rights are not a popularity contest. Bring back Omar Khadr now! For his sake and for all of our sakes as Canadian citizens!”
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