The Obama administration said it opposes a Canadian judge’s decision to allow the conditional release of an ex-Guantanamo prisoner captured in Afghanistan as a teenager by American troops.
State Department Spokesperson Jeff Rathke said that the US supports the Canadian government’s move to contest the ruling that saw Omar Khadr, now 28 years-old, conditionally freed from prison while waiting to challenge his prior conviction and guilty plea in an American appeals court.
“The United States supports Canada in its efforts to combat terrorism,” Rathke initially said, generally speaking. He admitted to Washington’s backing of Ottawa’s move after he was needled by Associated Press reported Matt Lee.
“The Canadian government has decided to appeal and we support them,” Rathke noted, before stressing that the position should not be construed as one that motivated Canada’s conservative government to oppose Khadr’s release.
Born to extremist Canadian-Egyptian parents, Khadr was taken to live in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent US invasion. According to The Guardian, his family resided in a “compound” alongside Osama bin Laden.
In July 2002, US troops raided the facility where Khadr was living, as a translator for Libyan militants. In the clash that ensured, US Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer was fatally injured and Khadr was severely wounded by a grenade.
The Canadian teenager was subsequently shot and taken by US troops, and ended up in Guantanamo by October 2002. There, he claims, he was tortured by being put in stress positions, sleep deprived, and shackled for so long that he wet himself.
In 2010, Khadr confessed to committing war crimes that led to Speer’s death. In 2012, he was transferred back to Canadian soil as a result.
It is not clear whether Khadr is responsible for killing Speer. Toronto Star national security reporter and the author of a book on Khadr, Michelle Shepherd, said on Friday that the former Gitmo prisoner isn’t sure if he threw the grenade, and that his treatment, at the hands of US captors, has rendered his memory of the incident somewhat unreliable.
Observers and critics of Khadr’s treatment have said that his alleged responsibility for the attack, however, distracts from issues worthy of greater attention—particularly considering evidence that his confession was obtained under torture. Khadr was just 15 years-old when he was captured, leading one Human Rights Watch lawyer to call for him to be treated “with the rehabilitation he deserved as a former child soldier.”
And although he was convicted of committing war crimes by a US military tribunal, such violence was not, in 2001, considered a crime “based on international law of war”–a fact that makes it likely appellate judges will rule in Khadr’s favor, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
