Injustice Speaks. A Series of Dialogues on Issues of Injustice

Injustice Speaks: AIDWYC hosts a series of dialogues on issues of injustice

Join us on December 1st for a fundraising cocktail engagement featuring Omar Khadr's Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney.

AIDWYC launches the fundraising speaker series 'Injustice Speaks'. Coinciding with our recent announcement of AIDWYC's charitable status, and designed to foster financial support for our organization and a dialogue on wrongful convictions and other human injustices, 'Injustice Speaks' will feature of-the-moment, in-the-trenches personalities and experts who fight injustice.

Our first 'Injustice Speaks' keynote, Canadian defence lawyer Dennis Edney, has spent the last 8 years defending Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who in July 2002 was accused of killing U.S. soldier Sergeant Christopher Speer in a firefight in Afghanistan and was sent to Guantanamo Bay detention centre. At the time of his arrest Khadr was 15 years old. His status as an alleged "child soldier" and the only Western citizen still remaining at Guantanamo Bay have led many to cry injustice and demand his repatriation to Canada.

In his own words Dennis Edney will explain why he thinks his client, caught in the crossfire of the War on Terror, has been a victim of a grave miscarriage of justice. AIDWYC is proud to foster a dialogue on the issue of injustice and welcomes Dennis Edney's contribution to the conversation.

Date & Time: December 1st, 2010, 5:00 - 7:00PM
Location: Arcadian Court, 401 Bay Street, The Simpson Tower, 8th Floor, Toronto
Price: $100 (Prices include hors d'oeuvres and wine)
A limited number of student tickets are available at the Student Rate: $35
Reserved seating is available for purchases of ten or more tickets.
Payment Methods: Cheque or Credit Card

For more information on this event please contact AIDWYC at contact@aidwyc.org or 416-504-7500 x221

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The Interrogation of Omar Khadr Pt. 2

Omar Khadr’s Canadian Lawyer: ‘The Americans Have Made Up The New Rules In The Laws Of War’

Yesterday, 24-year-old Canadian citizen Omar Khadr pleaded guilty to terrorism related charges during his military tribunal hearing at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr admitted to throwing a grenade on an Afghanistan battlefield that killed an American soldier in 2002 and planting numerous roadside bombs. Khadr had been reluctant to admit guilt, but his Canadian lawyer, speaking with the CBC’s As It Happens last night, explained the situation Khadr faced:

DENNIS EDNY: He’s agreed to accept this deal because when he looks at the alternatives and the alternatives are that he’s in a military process…that has been condemned by military prosecutors themselves who say that it is designed to make findings of guilt. He faced the potential of life in prison under this system here because the jury is hand picked, the judge is hand picked, the prosecution is hand picked and the military defense is hand picked. And then what I think really capped it all off was, much of the evidence against Omar are statements that he made while being abused and tortured and under duress. So the cards were stacked.

Indeed, Khadr was both mentally and physically abused at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, where he was first interrogated, and at Gitmo. Those statements he made under duress were deemed admissible in court. Moreover, the New York Times notes that Khadr’s prosecution was “unusual” not only because child soldiers are normally not prosecuted (Khadr was 15 years old when the U.S. military apprehended him), but also because the main charge against him was killing a soldier on the battlefield, an action, again, that is not traditionally prosecuted. Thus, the U.S. military took great pains (see the “Jurisdiction” section of Khadr’s Stipulation of Fact) to make the case that Khadr lacked military immunity. One reason the military cited was the fact that Khadr wore no national military uniform. The Times reports the Obama administration’s shocking reaction to this conundrum:

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US Veteran Who Killed Unarmed Iraqis Wins Tea Party Support

Murder charges were dropped against Ilario Pantano, who now verges on election victory buoyed by right-wing backing

by Ed Pilkington

The basic facts are undisputed: on 15 April 2004 Ilario Pantano, then a second lieutenant with the US marines, stopped and detained two Iraqi men in a car near Falluja. The Iraqis were unarmed and the car found to be empty of weapons.

Ilario Pantano, who is standing as a Republican candidate in North Carolina's 7th congressional district in the US midterm elections. (Photograph: Logan Wallace/AP)

Pantano ordered the two men to search the car for a second time and then, with no other US soldiers in view, unloaded a magazine of his M16A4 automatic rifle into them, before reloading and blasting a second magazine at them – some 60 rounds in total.

Over the corpses, he left a placard inscribed with the marine motto: "No better friend, No worse enemy."

Six years later Pantano is on the verge of a stunning electoral victory that could send him to the US Congress in Washington. He is standing as Republican candidate in North Carolina's 7th congressional district, which was last represented by his party in 1871.

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Maybe I need to read this again. This guy is about to get elected to Congress. And Omar Khadr, a child soldier, fighting for his life, goes to Guantanamo and eight years later is forced to plea bargain for some yet to be determined sentence, as opposed to being found guilty of a war crime. See following story. Tom

The Betrayal of Omar Khadr – and of American Justice

by Andy Worthington

Yesterday morning, wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a dark tie, Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, ended an eight-year struggle — first by the Bush administration, and then by the Obama administration — to convict him in a war crimes trial at Guantánamo, when he accepted a plea deal in exchange for a reported eight-year sentence.

Khadr’s guilty plea enables the Obama administration to disguise the many fundamental flaws with the Military Commissions, which might have been exposed during a trial.(Courtroom sketch by Janet Hamlin courtesy of Janet Hamlin Illustration.)

According to an article in the Miami Herald, drawing on comments made by “two legal sources with direct knowledge” of the deal, Khadr said he “eagerly took part in a July 28, 2002 firefight with US Special Forces in Afghanistan that mortally wounded Sgt 1st Class Christopher Speer.” This was the crux of the case against him, and a charge that he had always previously denied. He also said that he had “aspired as a teen to kill Americans and Jews,” and described his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, who had been responsible for taking him on numerous visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan as a child, leading to the events on the day of his capture, as “a part of Bin Laden’s inner circle, a trusted confidant and fundraiser.”

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Does this sound like justice to you? Tom

Child Soldier, Omar Khadr, Pleads Guilty in Plea Agreement

A Canadian prisoner in Guantanamo Bay has pleaded guilty to killing an American soldier while he was a young teenager as part of a deal that will allow him to avoid a war crimes trial.

Khadr's defense team say he was pushed into fighting the US by his father, said to be a close associate of Osama bin Laden. Human rights defenders have criticised Barack Obama, the US president, for seeking to prosecute Khadr.

Omar Khadr on Monday pleaded guilty to five charges, including murder, for throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. He was just 15 at the time of the incident, which occurred during a fierce firefight at an al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan.

Khadr, now 24, also admitted to planting improvised explosive devices and receiving weapons training from al-Qaeda. His defence lawyers say that because Khadr was a child when the offences occurred, he should not be tried for war-crimes.

The exact terms of the plea deal were not immediately disclosed, but Khadr is due to be sentenced by a military jury in several days. The sentence they impose is bound by the plea deal.

Khadr would be allowed to trasfer back to his native Canada after serving a year of his sentence as part of the deal, the military judge in charge of the case said.

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The Torture of Omar Khadr, a Child in Bagram and Guantánamo

Are we so inured to the implementation of torture by the Bush administration that we no longer recognize what torture is? Torture, according to the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person."

Under President Bush, however, John Yoo, an ideological puppet in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which is supposed to objectively interpret the law as it applies to the executive branch, purported to redefine torture, in two memos that have become known as the "torture memos," as the infliction of physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," or the infliction of mental pain which "result[s] in significant psychological harm of significant duration e.g. lasting for months or even years."

I ask this question about torture - and our attitude to it - because of what took place last week, in pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo preceding the trial by Military Commission of the Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr, who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002. A number of witnesses revealed details of Khadr's mistreatment, in the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, which hinted at his inclusion in an abusive program that, before the 9/11 attacks, before Yoo's memos and before a general coarsening of attitudes towards abuse and the mistreatment of prisoners, would have led to calls for that mistreatment to be thoroughly investigated, and, very possibly, for it to be regarded as torture or as cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

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Justice demands that we now repatriate Omar Khadr

ALLAN ROCK AND JASMINKA KALAJDZIC
January 26, 2009

President Barack Obama extended America's hand to the world last week, affirming his nation's commitment to returning to multilateralism and co-operation. He also spoke of "our common defence" and rejected "as false, the choice between our safety and our ideals." He declared, in a subtle rebuke of George Bush's anti-terrorism policies, that "our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper may wish to consider these words carefully as he ponders the troubling case of Omar Khadr, who is accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama has clearly signalled that national security imperatives will not justify breaches of international and domestic law. In one of his first executive actions, he obtained a stay of the trials of five Guantanamo Bay detainees, including Mr. Khadr, and, on Thursday, ordered the closing of Guantanamo within a year on the basis that shutting down the facility "would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice."

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Where has Allan Rock been for the last five years? Where has the liberal party been? Tom