Thursday, July 17, 2008

One of the reasons why Khadr cannot be tried in Canada

Our justice system has not yet adopted the Orwellian concept of unlawful combatant. Because of this it is unlikely we could charge Khadr with very much if anything. Very few seem to notice that if Khadr were a regular enemy combatant it would be rather ludicrous to charge him with murder when he was simply responding to an attack by coalition forces. We didn't charge Germans who killed allied troops in firefights with murder! But with a masterful stroke the U.S. has deemed that an unlawful combatant has none of the rights of a combatant nor rights under the Geneva convention. This is a travesty of justice and that our prime minister should go along with this is simply outrageous. The serious charges that Harper speaks of are purely an invention of the U.S. that follows from the farcical unlawful combatant concept. It is a concept rigged to deny the other side in the war on terror any rights that would normally be given to combatants. Obviously what the jihadists need is a proper uniform!Why many Canadians fail to understand this is difficult for me to comprehend. The law is not just meant to protect those who have never done anything wrong it is meant to protect everyone who is a Canadian and grant them basic rights. It has nothing to do with sympathy, empathy, or what sort of family one has or whether one is an actual or suspected terrorist.
The Bush administration wants a conviction and will carry on in the face of almost total global condemnation of the Guantanamo judicial process. Harper will carry on being a Bush lapdog and many Canadians will carry on supporting him and mouthing off against Khadr and the Khadr family bringing up issues that are totally irrelevant to the situation but nevertheless emotively compelling for some.

The passage below is from a longer article at the CBC.

The U.S. military commission that has been established to try Khadr views him as an "unlawful" participant in an international conflict — a civilian who had no legal right to attack American soldiers, and kill one of them, during U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, Newton said.
He said there are no Canadian laws that would fully reflect the nature of these charges. A murder charge under Canada's criminal code wouldn't speak to Khadr's so-called "unlawful" combatant status, while a charge under Canada's War Crimes Act, which criminalizes offences like genocide and crimes against humanity, likely wouldn't hold up, he added.
"Canadians would probably not view Khadr as having committed a war crime within the meaning of the act," Newton said.

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