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April 8, 2008 Prime Minister Harper’s stubborn refusal to save Omar Khadr from the injustice of a Guantanamo Bay show trial became even harder to grasp today as we learned that Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has agreed the process is unlawful. The National Post reports today that, “In a letter to… Bernier, U.S. Navy Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler says written statements the minister made last week about Mr. Khadr's detention show the government agrees with the defence's core arguments for dismissal of the case.” As Kuebler, the chief U.S. military lawyer for Khadr, explained in his letter to Bernier: “That the U.S. Department of Defence has elected to proceed despite this reality places your government in an awkward position and has created the conditions for a grave injustice to be done to Mr. Khadr.” International legal agreements that Canada has signed require that child soldiers – Khadr was 15 when he was apprehended in Afghanistan – be rehabilitated, not subjected to the same (il)legal criminal proceedings as adults. Still, Bernier repeated the untenable Harper position that the government has no intention of seeking repatriation until after the full trial and appeals process, which could take years. “To allow Mr. Khadr to be tried, convicted, and undergo a lengthy appeals process (of perhaps years) in order to give the U.S. courts the opportunity to reach the legal conclusion you have seemingly already reached can only serve to compound the injustice already done to this young Canadian man,” said Kuebler in his letter to Bernier. Several other U.S. allies have repatriated their citizens who got caught up in Guantanamo Bay.
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