Saturday 6 November 2010

Omar Khadr: Child Soldier

Omar Khadr is a young man who was captured by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan during a confrontation in 2002. He was 15 at the time and badly wounded; medics had to work hard to save his life. It turned out he was the son of a close collaborator with Bin Laden and, surprise, a Canadian citizen. His father had taken him to Pakistan and enlisted him in the struggle when he was 10 years old. After a period of “robust” interrogation, he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay where, after 8 years, he remains the only Western prisoner there. The US government recently put him through a military trial at the end of which he confessed to all the crimes he was accused of as part of a “deal” that would limit his further incarceration to another 8 years with the possibility of transfer to a Canadian prison after one year.