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May 14, 2008
Canada, US
'Moral Equivalent' of Al-Qaeda,
says Senator
Toronto
The pending Nuremberg-type trial of an Afghan Canadian at Guantanamo
Bay has led a senator to equate Canada and the US with Al-Qaeda for
human rights violations.
Appearing before a House of Commons committee on international human
rights in Ottawa Tuesday, Canadian senator Romeo Dallaire said the
US and his own country have sunk to the moral equivalent of Al-Qaeda
terrorists in their maltreatment of child soldier Omar Khadr held at
Guantanamo Bay.
Now 21, Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 for allegedly
throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier. The US has
ordered his trial before a military tribunal. Being a Canadian
citizen, he is the only western detainee at the US military base.
His will be the first such trial after the Nuremberg trials of the
Nazis after World War II.
The senator said Khadr was a child soldier who deserved to be
rehabilitated in society, rather than subjected to what he termed an
illegal trial. He said the Americans were paranoid about security
after 9/11 and ignoring international laws and conventions in their
treatment of Khadr.
Criticising his own government for not doing anything to bring Khadr
back, Dallaire said Canada was betraying itself by kowtowing to the
Americans.
The senator, who represents the opposition Liberal party, added,
``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 and you are going against those rights and
conventions, you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in
them at all.''
By ignoring Khadr's rights, he said, ``we are slipping down the
slope of going down that same route'' as Al-Qaeda terrorists.
In rebuttal, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney
asked the senator what he thought of Al-Qaeda outfitting mentally
retarded girls with explosives and forcing them to blow themselves
off in crowded Baghdad markets.
``Is it your testimony that Al-Qaeda strapping up a 14-year-old girl
with Down syndrome and sending her into a pet market to be remotely
detonated is the moral equivalent to Canada's not making
extraordinary political efforts for a transfer of Omar Khadr to this
country?'' Kenney asked him.
But the senator, who has served as special UN ambassador for
children, insisted that Canada was playing politics in the Khadr
case since its own forces have rehabilitated over 7,000 other child
soldiers in Afghanistan.
How is Khadr different from those who have been rehabilitated? he
asked.
May 14, 2008
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