Omar Khadr’s defence attorney says Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is misleading Canadians about the former Guantanamo detainee.
The federal government maintains that Khadr is a “dangerous convicted terrorist” who committed “heinous crimes,” including killing a U.S. soldier in a 2002 fire fight in Afghanistan.
Mr. Edney says that since 2007-08, Ottawa has had internal reports, written by Canadian officials who visited Khadr in Guantanamo, that contradict that assessment.
Among others, Mr. Edney cites a March, 2008 report that says, “Omar is salvageable, nonradicalized and a good kid who is well-liked both within the camp and by (Joint Task Force military) staff.” The report added that Khadr “demonstrated no bitterness or anger.”
Mr. Edney says the reports were written by Canadian Foreign Affairs officials after “welfare visits” to the prison by Foreign Affairs Department officials. Khadr, who was 21 at the time, was described as a “highly compliant detainee.”
Meanwhile, there is growing pressure to allow Khadr, who is now in a minimum security prison in Alberta, to speak with the media.
Requests to interview him have been denied repeatedly by Corrections Canada.
Last week, the CBC, the Toronto Star and a documentary producer, White Pine Pictures, went to court to gain permission to interview Khadr.
In 2010 while a prisoner at Guantanamo, the Toronto-born Khadr pleaded guilty to five war-crimes charges, including murder, for killing an American soldier in Afghanistan.
He was accused of throwing a grenade that killed Sergeant Christopher Speer during a battle at an Afghan compound in July 2002. Khadr, whose father had close ties to Osama bin Laden, was 15 at the time.
After spending 10 years in Guantanamo, Khadr was sentenced by a U.S. military commission to an additional eight years and sent to Canada.
Earlier this year, he was reclassified as a medium-security inmate and transferred to Bowden Institution in central Alberta from the maximum-security Edmonton Institution.
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