Posted on 11/13/2009 12:35:38 PM PST by NormsRevenge
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian courts grossly overreached when they ordered Ottawa to ask Washington to send a Canadian held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison back to Canada, a federal lawyer argued on Friday.
The government wants the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn lower court decisions that it had to ask the Obama administration to repatriate Omar Khadr, accused of killing a U.S. soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan.
The court heard oral arguments on Friday, and Khadr's legal team asked it to give a speedy ruling.
The case coincided with an announcement from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that Khadr was one of 10 Guantanamo inmates -- among 215 held there now -- against whom prosecutions would proceed.
Khadr's lawyers say Ottawa violated Khadr's rights in refusing to ask the United States to send him home. Canada said the courts could not dictate how it conducted foreign affairs.
"The courts have no more authority to order the government to request (Khadr's) repatriation than they have the power to order the government to recall the U.S. ambassador in protest or to order the government to amass our warships on the Baltic," federal lawyer Robert Frater told the court.
Two successive Canadian governments have declined to seek the repatriation of Khadr, now the last citizen of a western nation held at Guantanamo.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Can't say I blame them.
A drawing by artist Janet Hamlin, reviewed by the US military, shows young Canadian captive, Omar Khadr, who is accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in July 2002, attending a pre-trial session at the Guantanamo Bay naval base December 12, 2008. REUTERS/Janet Hamlin/Pool
Khadr’s case has not been helped by the fact that he is from a family with close ties to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. His late father was an al Qaeda financier.
His lawyers say he was a child soldier, 15 years old when he was captured in 2002, and that the United States tortured him in Guantanamo by depriving him of sleep.
His loyalty was to the Islamic empire and theocratic government.
Omar Khadr admitted to meeting Maher Arar in Afghanistan.
The same Maher Arar who convinced the Canadian government to pay him $10 million for being wrongly suspected of terrorism and left to the tortures of the Syrians—of which he has not a scar or a scratch on his body.
Khadr’s admission got very little press coverage here in Canada when all of his other claims of “torture” and “abuse” in Gitmo did—Arar is a darling of the Canadian left and this bit of news would have been too discomfiting to print.
Maher Arar is going to be Alger Hiss of Canada: exonerated by the left, only to be found dead guilty all along.
Deport him to Bermuda w/o telling the Brits.
Agreed.
One of the few things on CBC Radio North that I liked was when an American officer gave his view of Khadr. He was there and was blinded in one eye by the grenade thrown by this individual. The US Army medics actually saved this person. I hope this is generally known to our Freeper friends.
Kudos to the United States for telling Arar to keep his now wealthy posterior out of that good country. Imagine the humiliation, to seem him strutting about for the usual suspects of the MSM. This if he enforced his wishes. Plus he wants dollars from the American taxpayer (read govt). His application to enter the United States is possibly just that. The devious and cunning use of laws, to rub the actions of him and his ilk, in the faces of a decent people.
Canada / Khadr ping
Send him to Churchill, the Polar Bears need to be feed!!!!
You’re welcome, Cindy.
I’m afraid we are saddling you folks with this guy.
Sorry.
Hopefully this clown gets the gas.
Hopefully Canada kicks out and deports the rest of his clan here in canuckistan pulling in welfare and getting free wheelchairs at the expense of the hard working canadian taxpayer.
Welcome to Free Republic, celtictomcat.
I’m pinging Bahbah to my post, as she is the nicest person in the welcome wagon group.
Have you been reading here long?
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