PhD studies in human rights: Omar Khadr Leaves Guantanamo for Canada

Sunday, 30 September 2012

Omar Khadr Leaves Guantanamo for Canada

Omar Khadr has been released from Guantanamo, where he has been detained for a decade, to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canada pursuant to a prisoner exchange agreement. When he was fifteen, Khadr was in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban against the United States. There, he threw a grenade that killed an American soldier. In 2010, he pleaded guilty for doing this and was sentenced to an eight-year prison term.

Years earlier, nationals of the UK, Australia and other countries who had been detained were repatriated at the request of their governments. By contrast, Canada’s right wing government has refused to do anything to assist Omar Khadr, who was born in Canada and is a Canadian citizen. As early as April of this year, the US authorities indicated they were ready to repatriate Khadr. The Canadian government has been dragging its heels on bringing him home.

It is doubtful that a Canadian young offender, aged fifteen, would be sentenced to more than eight years in prison. Khadr has been in detention for a decade already anyway.

His crime has always been a bit of a mystery to me. There was (and is) an armed conflict going on in Afghanistan. Why is it a crime for a combatant on one side in the conflict to kill a combatant on the other side? And even if it is a crime, presumably it would be a crime under the laws of Afghanistan. Why then would someone be tried for this crime in Guantanamo and then serve his sentence in Canada? Khadr pleaded guilty as a result of an agreement, but he had little real choice. Without a plea deal, he might have much longer in Guantanamo.

Khadr should be released from detention in Canada as soon as possible. He is eligible for release sometime in 2013. This will be a matter for the country’s parole authorities, who we should presume will behave in a fair and objective manner, without the perverse political bias of the Canadian government authorities. If the Harper government had done its job, Khadr would already be a free man.

There remain 166 detainees in Guantanamo. Four years ago, Barrack Obama promised that if he were elected the notorious prison would be shut down.

1 comment:

Hoffmann Tamás said...: With respect, professor,

1. "Why is it a crime for a combatant on one side in the conflict to kill a combatant on the other side?"

As you are well aware, not everybody can lawfully take lifes even in an armed conflict. If Khadr was an unprivileged belligerent, he has committed first degree murder.

2. "And even if it is a crime, presumably it would be a crime under the laws of Afghanistan. Why then would someone be tried for this crime in Guantanamo and then serve his sentence in Canada?"

Murder is a crime in Afghanistan and in the rest of the world as well. The US had jurisdiction since the victim was an American national and the judgment can be executed in another country as well...; 1 October 2012 at 11:10

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William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University, emeritus professor human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights of the National University of Ireland Galway, and an honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in Beijing and Wuhan University. He is the author of more than 20 books and 300 journal articles, on such subjects as the abolition of capital punishment, genocide and the international criminal tribunals. Professor Schabas was a member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in Human Rights and president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He serves as president of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association chair of the Institute for International Criminal Investigation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Here is the full c.v.

Dr Yvonne McDermott is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bangor University, UK, where she is also Director of Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of the Bangor Centre for International Law. Yvonne is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway (B. Corp. Law, LL.B.), Leiden University (LL.M. cum laude) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (Ph.D.). Her research focuses on fair trial rights, international criminal procedure and international criminal law. She is the author of Fairness in International Criminal Trials (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Niamh Hayes has been the Head of Office for the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) in The Hague since September 2012. She is about to complete her Ph.D. on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence by international criminal tribunals at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. She previously worked for Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice as a legal consultant, and as an intern for the defence at the ICTY in the Karadzic case. She has lectured on international criminal law and international law at Trinity College Dublin and, along with Prof. William Schabas and Dr. Yvonne McDermott, is a co-editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013). She is the author of over 45 case reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.

Joseph Powderly is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Between September 2008 and January 2010, he was a Doctoral Fellow/Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where he worked, among other projects, on a Irish Government-funded investigation and report into the possible perpetration of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya people of North Rakhine State, Burma/Myanmar. He is currently in the process of completing his doctoral research which looks at the impact of theories of judicial interpretation on the development of international criminal and international humanitarian law. The central thesis aims to identify and analyze the potential emergence of a specific theory of interpretation within the sphere of judicial creativity. Along with Dr. Shane Darcy of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, he is co-editor of and contributor to the edited collection Judicial Creativity in International Criminal Tribunals which was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He has written over 80 case-reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law, as well as numerous book chapters and academic articles on topics ranging from the principle of complementarity to Irish involvement in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions. In December 2010, he was appointed Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Criminal Law Forum. His research interests while focusing on international criminal and international humanitarian law also include topics such as the history of international law and freedom of expression.

PhD studies in human rights

Sunday, 30 September 2012

Omar Khadr Leaves Guantanamo for Canada

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