Omar Khadr and the Rule of Law
Rev. Brian Kiely. Unitarian Church of Edmonton
Edmonton, April 25, 2008
The most interesting thing about lawyer Denis Edney’s April 23rd presentation at the Unitarian Church was how little time he spent discussing the young man’s actual case. Khadr is the Canadian citizen being held by the U.S.government in GuantanamoBay. Captured at the age of 15 in Afghanistan, the boy-become-man has been held in solitary confinement and, until recently, without charges for over six years . . .
Dennis Edney is an Edmonton-based criminal attorney who has taken the Khadr case for free. He was speaking at an evening event sponsored by the UCE Social Justice Committee and Amnesty International.
It quickly became evident that Mr. Edney was concerned for two things, the welfare of his client and the abandonment of the rule of law by the American and Canadian governments. He called Guantanamoa “place with no rules”. By that he meant that the rules changed to suit the whims of the government and the guards. He described an incredibly dehumanizing place, a place where the prisoners – or ‘detainees’ as the U.S. Administration insists on calling them – are psychologically and physically abused on a daily basis. He described how the authorities release only the information they feel like giving out or are occasionally compelled to give out after lengthy court battles. He described how even then it is sometimes falsified evidence and ‘corrected’ documents that are given out. He described how difficult it has been for him to get access to his client. In short he described how the rights and humane treatment any citizen would expect when in conflict with the law have been denied to this seriously wounded child.
The U.S.authorities have consistently maintained that they had an eye witness to Mr. Khadr throwing a hand grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. It is their key piece of evidence, yet a few weeks ago the witness document was accidentally released. It tells a different story. In fact no one saw Mr. Khadr armed or fighting Americans. The witnesses’ diary shows that the grenade was thrown by another now dead man in the same compound.
But that is not the main point for Mr. Edney. The key issue is that the treatment of Mr. Khadr and others flies in the face of international law, American civil law and military convention.
Mr. Edney also explained that the Canadian government is alone in the world in that they have not sought to repatriate Mr. Khadr. All other developed nations (including Britainand Australia) with citizens in American custody have successfully brought their people home to face civil court charges. Instead, the Canadian government sent CSIS operatives to interrogate Mr. Khadr and have subsequently given the information gleaned freely to the U.S.authorities, but withheld it from Mr. Edney. Peter McKay, speaking for the Harper government has expressed faith in the American military judicial process and has chosen to withhold consular services from Mr. Khadr.
It was difficult listening to Mr. Edney, difficult to accept that our government and that of the United States has been so willing to abandon the rule of law and international conventions in the case of Mr. Khadr and the Guantanamo prisoners. He views it as a triumph of fundamentalist thinking – the kind that views evil as something definable and external and a thing to be eradicated by any means. It is the kind of thinking that abandons morality in pursuit of its goal. In this regard the policies towards detainees is little different from the Nazi death camps that we so revile.
I suspect that a good number of his listeners wondered how Mr. Edney keeps his spirits up, and how Mr. Khadr continues to survive. Indeed, Mr. Edney displayed a cynicism with regards to elected officials and slight hope that the system will change in the future. Yet he keeps working for Mr. Khadr. Why? “Because he has been abandoned by his country and everyone he has known and he expects me to abandon him too. I made him a promise that I would not.”
When asked what we could do, he urged us to visit politicians, to “get in their faces.” He profiles himself as a nuisance and attributes what success he has had to that fact. If the citizens don’t demand more from the politicians we elect and employ, they won’t give it.