I’m trying to understand what the problem is in Omar Khadr’s case. He’s currently 23 years old but was caught in Afghanistan 8 years ago. To me, living in 2010, a 15 year old is a minor. It was clear, to me, that a 15 year old soldier was a child soldier and should be treated as such. Furthermore, this was only one of the many problems with the case: potentially inadmissible proof, the treatment of a child as an adult and the whole Guantanamo prison fiasco. But to me, the one clear thing is that he was a child soldier!
Legally, it seems to be not so clear. Not only is 15 year old the threshold in many texts but the countries themselves define how to react to another country’s child soldier. The USA might not have been in the wrong in arresting him… but then, he wasn’t treated as a soldier at all. He was treated as a person who killed an American citizen. The problem is that, it should have been one or the other. Either he was a soldier protected under international conventions or not, and given the benefit of doubt until proven guilty.
As a Canadian citizen, the government should have pushed to have him stand a fair trial and it is not too late to do so. The government must seem active in this high profile case and show that, at the very least, a Canadian citizen can expect justice. It really pained me to hear Khadr’s lawyer dismiss the judge as against them and saying that it was such a sham that their only hope would be to sway the jury. And, to all people saying that, if he wasn’t a terrorist, 8 years in gitmo would have made him one, while that may be true, it could also be the opposite. Morally, we need to think: Do we want an innocent person in prison (if he is one…)? Even if that made him mad, there are mental institutions for such cases.
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