In his situation there appears to be evidence that his is not one of the innocent bystanders who were sold or turned in by others to gain favor with the US.
TORONTO -- The thundering F-16 and A-10 warplanes reduced the fighters' compound in Afghanistan to smoldering rubble. No one could still be alive, figured the U.S. soldiers crouched nearby. But inside, saved by a half-standing wall, a lanky 15-year-old waited as the wary soldiers neared.
As the Americans recount it, he leapt up, threw a grenade and was cut down by the soldiers' fire. The grenade scored: A 28-year-old sergeant was mortally wounded.
The boy was not, however. Blinded in one eye, his chest ripped opened by bullets, Omar Khadr lay on the ground and asked the soldiers to kill him -- in perfect English.
He was a Canadian.
"Everybody who walked by wanted to put a round in him," said Master Sgt. Scotty Hansen, who was awarded a Bronze Star for Valor after the battle in 2002. "But we all knew that's not the way we do it."
Omar survived this and has been held at Gitmo ever since. There have been claims by his attornies that he has been abused. I'm not going to address that.
His family has reported ties to terrorism. The Khadr family's notoriety began with its patriarch. Ahmed Said Khadr, who was born in Egypt and moved to Canada in 1977. He and his wife, Maha, a Palestinian who had lived most of her life in Ottawa, had six children -- four of them born in Canada.
Khadr was a computer engineer, but he shuttled back and forth to troubled Muslim regions of the world, raising money for charities, he told officials. In December 1995, he was arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of helping finance the bombing a month earlier of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, which killed 17 people. In January 1996, Canada's prime minister at the time, Jean Chretien, visited Pakistan and appealed to the government to release the Canadian citizen.
After he was freed, Khadr moved his family to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where they lived in the same compound as Osama bin Laden. In 1999, bin Laden attended Zaynab's wedding, family members acknowledge. Khadr's sons were sent to al Qaeda summer camps, according to Abdurahman (Omar's older brother), who described his father's fanatic devotion to Islamic jihad causes and attempts to persuade his son to become a martyr.
After Sept. 11, 2001, the family scattered. Maha eventually returned to Toronto. But the elder Khadr took his sons to the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan to carry on the fight. U.S. authorities, who identified him as a ranking aide to bin Laden, tried hard to find him.
That duly noted I doubt anyone can question the families alleged ties to terrorism. However, my focus is this, Omar was 15 at the time. Being taken by his father was he a willing partipant or basically brainwashed? How much does that matter? To me it should be a part of his trial, problem being there has been no trial. He's been held for three years at Gitmo and is now 18 years old. Why the delay in his case of not trying him? If there is evidence and testimony as to his killing a US soldier, Sgt. Christopher J. Speers, shouldn't his family get closure by having Omar tried? Even if you don't like what Omar Khadr has done or how his family feels about Islam and the US, there are deeper issues here. One of them being the right to trial. If Omar is found guilty? Then he should pay for the crimes convicted of.
1 comment:
Jill that's only under the Geneva Convention which doesn't apply. Our courts have determined they do have the right to trial.
I'm not suggesting he be allowed to go free, I am however stating that any factors related to his age will be a part of the trial and it is up to a jury to determine rather than holding him in limbo.
Post a Comment