Canada wrong for not helping Guantanamo detainee: senator
OTTAWA (AFP) — Canada is no better than the terrorists it is fighting if it does not help free a Canadian "child soldier" held at the US naval facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Senator Romeo Dallaire said Tuesday.
The former general, best known for his account of the 1994 Rwanda genocide as a UN peacekeeper, told a parliamentary committee that Canadian Omar Khadr should be repatriated and rehabilitated, not tried by a US military court.
"The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties in order to say that you're doing it to protect yourself ... you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all," he said.
Khadr faces an upcoming US military tribunal on charges that he murdered a US army medic in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 years old.
He was arrested the same year and has since been held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He is currently the only Canadian held at the facility.
In a heated exchange with a government MP, Dallaire accused Canada and the United States of ignoring international protocols on child soldiers. "You're either with the law or not with he law," he said.
And by allowing a "flawed and illegal" US prosecution of Khadr to continue, Canada risks "going down the same road as those who absolutely don't believe in them at all," he said.
"The way to sort it out is you get the prime minister of this country to call the (US) president and say, 'I want my boy out and we'll fill out the paperwork after.' And that's it," said Dallaire.
Government MP Jason Kenney later told reporters he was "shocked and disturbed" by Dallaire's "outrageous and extreme remarks."
"One can fairly and legitimately criticize all sorts of things about the United States and its legal approach to terrorism but to actually and explicitly say that it's on the same moral plain as people who blow up children is bizarre and unacceptable," he said.
The Canadian government has said it would continue to provide consular services to Khadr as well as press Washington to ensure that he receives "proper care" and to "take into account his age" when dealing with the charges.
But Ottawa has otherwise refused to intervene on his behalf in the case, despite mounting pressure from opposition parties and human rights groups.
