Time is running out for Canadians to lobby for Omar Khadr, warns Dennis Edney, Canadian defense lawyer to the Guantanamo Bay detainee. As the youngest prisoner in the notorious detention facility, Khadr is set to stand trial Nov. 7, Edney is certain Khadr will be found guilty.
“We need to get off our chairs and make calls,” he said, addressing a small gathering of less than 20 people at the event organized by the United Church on Bloor Street yesterday.
“I have been travelling for two months because when Omar Khadr is found guilty by that farcical process I can say I did everything I could possibly do for that young man,” said Edney.
Omar Khadr has been held in Guantanamo Bay for the last six years since American soldiers captured him in Afghanistan at the age of 15.
“All Omar is asking for is a fair trial, and there is nothing fair about Guantanamo,” said Edney, who has been working pro bono on the case for the past six years.
“Protests and rallies are great, but we need to knock on the doors of these politicians, on both sides and demand to speak with them,” said Edney, citing the example of Rahim Jaffer, the only Conservative MP to acknowledge the need to bring Khadr back home after activists in Alberta pressured him to respond. The defence lawyer emphasized the need to be bold when dealing with politicians.
Khadr is now the only Western citizen remaining in Guantanamo. The case remains atypical in that the Canadian government has refused to seek extradition or repatriation, despite the repeated urges of Amnesty International, UNICEF, and the Canadian Bar Association.
According to Edney, the cabinet decided not to act to bring Khadr back despite a clear opportunity repatriate him, thereby imparting the message, “do what you want with him.”
Edney suggests Canada follow the example of Australia which fought to have Al-Qaeda trainee David Hicks returned to his home soil on April 2007, where he served the remaining nine months of a suspended seven-year sentence.
Divulging the details of Khadr’s legal struggle in the past six years, the Edmonton-based lawyer is critical of both the US and Canadian governments.
Early on in 2002, Edney sued the Canadian government for failing to provide consular services to Khadr when he was first detained. These services would have obligated the provision of legal and medical assistance to the prisoner, now 22 years old. The United States Supreme Court later ruled that the US had breached the international convention on torture, and that Canada has been complicit in the process. But this did not prompt action to bring Khadr back home.
“I would like not to represent Omar Khadr. I’d like to go home, spend time with my children, make money. But, I am persuaded to keep working when I remember Omar’s words to me, ‘You will leave me, because everyone else will leave me.’”
