Submitted by crinadmin on
[OTTAWA, 5 September 2009] - Canada's high court on Friday agreed to a government request to review a lower court order to repatriate a young Canadian held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The government's application for leave to appeal the Federal Court of Appeal's order to repatriate Omar Khadr and to stay the order until an expedited appeal is heard "are granted," Canada's Supreme Court said. A hearing was scheduled to be held on November 13. Khadr was detained in Afghanistan in July 2002 when he was 15 years old for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier, a charge he has denied. He is the last westerner being held at the US "war on terror" prison camp, where he has been held since October 2002 and is awaiting trial on charges of murder, conspiracy and support of terrorism. Last month, Canadian federal Judge James O'Reilly agreed with Khadr's lawyers that the government's steadfast refusal to request from the United States his repatriation infringed on Khadr's constitutional rights and "a principle of fundamental justice." The government sought to overturn the decision, arguing the court was meddling in Canadian foreign policy. Born in Toronto to a family with strong ties to Al-Qaeda, Khadr is to celebrate his 23rd birthday on September 19 in his cell at the US naval base in Cuba, awaiting trial. His Egyptian-born father was a suspected Al-Qaeda financier before being killed in a shootout in 2003 with Pakistani forces, and his siblings, who claimed to have met Osama bin Laden, were investigated for alleged ties to Al-Qaeda. Yet despite his family history, "Omar identifies himself strongly with Canada," his former US military lawyer Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler said last year. Khadr was taken to Pakistan with his parents in 1990 when he was a child to help with reconstruction along the Pakistan-Afghan border following the withdrawal of Russian troops, according to an online family biography. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, he found himself in Afghanistan. A year later, he was captured by US soldiers in Khost, in the east of the country. The US government alleges that Khadr was the lone survivor of a four-hour US bombardment of an Al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002, who rose from the rubble and killed a US sergeant with a grenade. Kuebler described him as a "frightened, wounded, 15-year-old boy, a boy like other children wrongfully involved in armed conflict who had no business being there, who sat slumped against a bush while a battle raged around him." He is a "good kid" and "salvageable," according to his captors, cited in Canadian government files published last year. But in a heavily redacted affidavit, Khadr claimed he was treated brutally after his capture when he was taken, severely wounded, to a military camp in Bagram, Afghanistan, and later to Guantanamo. Judge O'Reilly said Ottawa has a "duty to protect persons in Mr Khadr's circumstances by taking steps to ensure that their fundamental rights, recognized in widely-accepted international instruments, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, are respected. "To mitigate the effect of that violation, Canada must present a request to the United States for Mr Khadr's repatriation to Canada as soon as practicable," he added. In his ruling, the judge considered that Khadr was not granted special status as a minor by US authorities, was isolated at the prison in Cuba and subjected to sleep deprivation. Ottawa has so far also rejected pressure from opposition MPs, rights groups and others to bring Khadr home, saying repeatedly it would wait for the US proceedings to play out. Further information
pdf: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gGf8EDc0TQuN_06l0n-qV...