Submitted by crinadmin on
Summary: Child soldier Omar Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 by American forces at the age of 15 and detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp since then. In 2010, he had to plead guilty to the charges and their details to get a new 8 year sentence with the possibility of a transfer to his country, Canada, where he was sent in September. While the country has an obligation to rehabilitate him, Public Safety Minister considers him "a terrorist, not a child soldier".
[Ottawa, 22 October 2012] - Omar Khadr is a terrorist, not a child soldier, but Canada has an obligation to rehabilitate the convicted war criminal now that he’s back in the country, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Sunday. “I don’t agree he was a child soldier in the sense that he was somehow misled. The evidence is very clear. He’s a convicted murderer, he’s a terrorist and that’s the basis I brought him back on,” Toews said Sunday on CTV’s Question Period. “I do believe we have an obligation to rehabilitate him even though he is not a child soldier in the technical sense of that word,” he added. Khadr, 26, returned to Canada at the end of September — flown in from the notorious Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he’d been incarcerated for a decade. He’s currently being held at the maximum security Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ont. In October 2010, Khadr pleaded guilty to five war crimes, including throwing a grenade that killed U.S. soldier Christopher Speer in Afghanistan. He was 15 at the time. The Canadian citizen was sentenced to 40 years in jail but, under a plea deal, only had to serve eight. He became eligible to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canada last fall. The government has faced significant criticism for the amount of time it’s taken to make a decision on the transfer, including from U.S. authorities anxious to get him repatriated. “I’m satisfied I made the right decision in bringing him back now,” Toews said Sunday. “I think it would have been a mistake to wait for six years so the Americans would dump him on our borders, because he is a Canadian citizen. I felt that there needed to be intervention and monitoring by the Canadian government during the remainder of his sentence.” When asked how Khadr was adjusting, Toews said he had left that file “in the capable hands” of Correctional Service of Canada.