Colin Freeze takes a look at the family’s many battles and how their ‘judicial jihad’ has affected Canadian courts and government
The case of Omar Khadr reaches the Supreme Court of Canada today, when top judges hear arguments on whether Canada should regard the Guantanamo Bay prison facility as legal.
Mr. Khadr, 21, has been in the U.S. military camp since he was shot and detained at the age of 15 and accused of killing a U.S. soldier in a battle in Afghanistan.
Just down the street in Ottawa, the Federal Court heard the case of Mr. Khadr’s older brother Abdullah, who is seeking the right to document disclosure in his fight against extradition to the United States on charges he once sold weapons to al-Qaeda.
The Khadr family has a long association with al-Qaeda. Hailed as a “martyr” by al-Qaeda after he was killed by the Pakistani army in 2003, the Egyptian-born family patriarch, Ahmed Said Khadr, (pictured) moved his family from Canada to Afghanistan during the 1980s jihad against the Soviets. The senior Mr. Khadr introduced his young children to Osama bin Laden and paramilitary training camps.
The Khadrs may have been compelled to leave behind their involvement in the Afghanistan
jihad, but federal agents complain they have replaced it with a “judicial jihad” in Canada and have become a legal industry unto themselves and a force to be reckoned with.
Their devotion to the global spread of militant Islam has frequently tested laws, politicians and judges.
Time and again, the predicament of one Khadr or another has forced officials to decide whether Canada will stand up for its liberal principles and go to bat for its citizens or bend the rules, sidestep issues and sweep sensitive security matters under the carpet.
“The Khadrs, allegedly accused of terrorism acts, test the boundaries of various security provisions,” said long-time family lawyer Dennis Edney.
“What better cases are there than the Khadrs?” said Mr. Edney, who says his clients could expose Canada’s relationships with countries that arbitrarily detain, torture or “disappear” prisoners.
The Khadrs have fought many battles on both military and legal fronts, influencing Canadian law and creating dilemmas for the courts and government.
Read it all, its a nightmare…
Maha Khadr, terrorist matriarch
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* Shysters on fishing expedition*
OTTAWA, Canada (AP) — Canada’s Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday about the legality of the detention of a Canadian detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, an event that essentially puts the U.S. military war-crimes trial system on trial in a foreign jurisdiction.
The detainee can raise the issue of legality of his detention and forthcoming trial at Guantanamo Bay.
Omar Khadr’s attorneys are arguing that interviews with the terrorism suspect by Canadian intelligence officials at Guantanamo violate Canada’s bill of rights because U.S. practices at Guantanamo are at odds with international human rights law.
The court is to decide whether the Canadian government should release details about his interviews with Canadian officials in 2003 and 2004 so that the lawyers can provide a full defense against U.S. charges.
Khadr is charged with killing a U.S. soldier in a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan when he was 15.
The Supreme Court ruled last week that Khadr’s attorneys could raise the legality of his detention and forthcoming trial in Guantanamo when they make their arguments that the interviews should be released.
Khadr’s attorneys are hoping the Supreme Court comments on the U.S. military base when they rule.
“Canada is going to have to consider whether the U.S. is beyond the rule of law,” said Dennis Edney, a Khadr attorney.
The lawyers cite violations of juvenile justice rules set out by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, noting that Khadr was a teenager when he was captured. They also point to international agreements on civil and political rights and the treatment of prisoners.
Canada’s Justice Department, in its brief to the court, dismissed the efforts by Khadr’s attorneys as a “fishing expedition in relation to the most sensitive of government-held information.”
Read it all, from CNN
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Attack was to be bigger than London bombings, expected evidence shows
Dangerous nutroots: ISABEL TEOTONIO/Star reporter, is not worried: its all ‘alleged’, you see. Its all a ploy by the authorities to give Muslims and Islam a bad image…
The “shocking and sensational” inner workings of an alleged homegrown terror cell were unveiled yesterday in a Brampton court – and included the plotting of an attack “much greater” in scale than the London 2005 bombings that killed 52 people.
In a document made public for the first time, the Crown painted a broad picture of the expected evidence in the trial of a youth who pleaded not guilty to belonging to a terrorist group. The trial opened yesterday.
According to the allegations, the so-called Toronto 18 were attempting to secure a safe house to store weapons and practise military drills, and embarking on a mission to destroy the West – one they should be willing to die for.
Details of the alleged plot, which also included storming Parliament Hill and beheading politicians, emerged in a factum filed by the Crown that described the case against the accused as “shocking and sensational.”
The document contains transcripts of wiretaps and videotapes that include one conversation in which one of the accused speaks of the group’s ambitions.
* More bang for the buck:
“They’re probably expecting what happened in London or something,” he said. “… Some bombing in a subway kills 10 people and everybody gets deported. We’re not doing that. … So our thing it’s, it’s much, much greater on a scale … you do it once and you make sure they can never recover again.”
More
“Rome has to be defeated” doesn’t refer to an Italian plot, but to the necessity, as they see it, to take down the West, in accord with Muhammad’s prophecy that Constantinople would fall to Islam first, and then Rome.Â
*Â Hugh Fitzgerald explainsÂ
An Update on the Toronto Jihad Plot. Oh, and by the way, has the Muslim community in Canada gotten around to instituting transparent, inspectable programs in every school and mosque teaching against the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism? No? So then how can we be sure that there won’t be other such plots?
by “Alleged Toronto terror plot detailed in court,” Isabel Teotonio in the Toronto Star via JW
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