As the Toronto Star first reported, the 26-year-old prisoner was flown off the U.S. Naval base by American government aircraft from Cuba’s southeast shore at 4:30 a.m. Saturday.
He arrived at Trenton military airbase almost four hours later, and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews confirmed his arrival at 7:40 a.m. at a later morning news conference in Winnipeg.
In a telephone conversation to his Toronto lawyers, Khadr said he is thrilled to be in Canada but apprehensive.
“He is finding it hard to believe he is really back but is very happy to be home,” John Norris said in Toronto.
“He is also anxious about having to learn a whole new world in a Canadian prison but we know he can do that.
Khadr has been taken to the assessment unit at Millhaven Penitentiary in Bath, Ontario - which is customary practice for inmates entering Canada's federal service.
“We are hopeful they will see he's not a management problem and that he has tremendous potential,” Norris said.
“We like the idea of the assessment based on someone who actually sits down and talks to Omar and gets to know him as opposed to an assessment based on the caricature the government has propagated.”
It is unclear how long the assessment will take. Norris said traditionally it lasts six weeks although he has had clients who take longer.
Toews said he made the decision earlier this week to agree to the transfer.
“Omar Khadr is a known supporter of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network and a convicted terrorist,” said Toews.
He outlined Khadr’s guilty pleas at a military war crimes commission, and stressed his criminal acts, but Toews also appeared to carefully alert Canadians he would be closely monitored here.
Toews also said Khadr “was born in Canada and is a Canadian citizen. As a Canadian citizen, he has a right to enter Canada after the completion of his sentence.”
He said the transfer was conducted according to a legal process initiated by the U.S. and “determined in accordance with Canadian law. The remainder of his prison sentence will be administered by the Correctional Service of Canada.”
The minister said he was “satisfied” that Canadian prison authorities will oversee Khadr “in a manner which recognizes the serious nature of the crimes that he has committed and ensure the safety of Canadians is protected during incarceration.”
“Any decisions related to his future will be determined by the independent Parole Board of Canada in accordance with Canadian law.” CTV cameras had tracked a Corrections Canada transport of Khadr from Trenton to Millhaven prison, a maximum security federal facility in Bath, Ont.
Ottawa lawyer Paul Champ, who helped to advocate Khadr’s cause at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2008, told CBC that Khadr will be very focused now on trying to regain “a normal life” after being imprisoned “in the most notorious prison in the world.”
“He’s got a lot to get over,” Champ said, adding much would depend on whether “Canada steps up and assists in rehabilitation and counseling.”
“Is (the government of) Canada ready to accept their responsibilities in that regard?”
The Pentagon confirmed Khadr’s transfer leaves 166 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and added that the U.S. government “coordinated” with the government of Canada “regarding appropriate security and humane treatment measures” for the remainder of Khadr’s sentence.
U.S. President Barack Obama had promised before his 2008 election that he would close Guantanamo Bay, a promise he later admitted his administration would not fulfill, but the release of the last Western detainee from the remote island prison will be welcomed by his Democratic base in advance of the first 2012 presidential election debate this week.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights released a statement calling Khadr’s case “one of the ugliest chapters in the decade-long history of Guantanamo.”
“Khadr never should have been brought to Guantanamo. He was a child of fifteen at the time he was captured, and his subsequent detention and prosecution for purported war crimes was unlawful, as was his torture by U.S. officials,” CCR Legal Director Baher Azmy wrote.
Khadr’s first U.S. civilian lawyer, Muneer Ahmad, now a Clinical Professor of Law at Yale, said he was glad Khadr was out of Guantanamo.
“Omar is no longer the boy I met in 2004, but I am hopeful that as a young man finally back home in Canada, he will be allowed to live the normal life I know he craves,” Ahmad said in an email to the Star upon reading the news of his repatriation. “It's time for the fear-mongering to stop, and to let Omar be.”
NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar agreed, and told CBC television it was high time for Khadr to be returned.
“For us the key fundamental question is why it took so long and why our government didn’t live up to its responsibilities.”
Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae told the Star Khadr's return “is long overdue.”
“Omar Khadr was a child soldier, recruited as a young boy, who should have been brought back to Canadian justice and rehabilitation long ago. I salute the efforts of Senator (Romeo) Dallaire to bring Omar back, and in continuing his efforts to deal with the issue of the tragic recruitment of children into violence and warfare.”
Other civil liberties advocates rejoiced at the news.
Jennifer Turner, a human rights researcher with the American Civil Liberties Union who attended most of Khadr’s military trial proceedings in Cuba, called his decade in American custody at Guantanamo Bay “abusive” and “abhorrent” and said it “should never have happened.”
She expressed hope that Canadian authorities would give Khadr “a meaningful opportunity for rehabilitation and reintegration into society, which Canada is required to provide under the child soldier treaty that Canada itself helped establish.”
In Toews’ formal decision to accept Khadr’s repatriation, which was released publicly, he said several issues “cause me concern,” including Khadr’s participation in “terrorist training and military operations” in Afghanistan, and the fact that Khadr “idealizes his father Ahmed Sa'id Khadr and appears to deny Ahmad Khadr's lengthy history of terrorist action and association with Al-Qaeda.”
Khadr's family associations continue to trouble the Canadian government, said Toews, adding Khadr's mother and older sister “have openly applauded his crimes and terrorist activities.”
Toews said Khadr has had “very little contact with Canadian society and therefore will require substantial management in order to ensure safe re-integration into Canada.”
The public safety minister said he was concerned about Khadr’s “experiences in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Guantanamo Bay and the degree to which they have radicalized him.”
Toews stressed he is confident prison officials and parole authorities will administer Khadr’s sentence in view of the “serious nature” of his crimes and the security concerns the minister outlined, and that they will provide appropriate programming and, if he is granted parole, “robust conditions of supervision” to ensure public safety.
Millhaven, where Khadr is now housed, is currently about 40 per cent double-bunked, according to correctional union officials. But so are many federal penitentiaries across the country.
Jason Godin, the union’s Ontario regional vice-president, said only a “small circle of people” were apprised of Khadr’s arrival, and important information has not yet been shared with guards.
“They have not shared a threat risk assessment with us,” he said. “We have lots of questions about managing this guy. We were left in the dark.”
The Khadr saga began more than a decade ago, in June 2002, on a battlefield in Afghanistan. The 15-year-old was shot and captured by an American Special Forces unit following a lengthy battle where U.S. Delta Force Sgt. Christopher Speer was fatally wounded.
Khadr is the second youngest son of now deceased Egyptian-born Canadian, Ahmed Said Khadr, who was close with Al Qaeda’s elite. The Khadr family’s unpopularity overshadowed much of his case.
In October 2010, Khadr pleaded guilty before a Guantanamo military tribunal to five war crimes, including “murder in the violation of war” for Speer’s death. He received an 8-year-sentence and a diplomatic agreement from Ottawa that after one more year he would be transferred to Canada in return for the plea deal.
Yet the guilty plea did little to change public opinion on the case. Some believe pleading guilty was the Canadian’s only way out of the detention facility where he had spent a third of his life. Others argue the sentence was too lenient and urged Ottawa to refuse his transfer request.
Navy Capt. John Murphy, Guantanamo’s chief prosecutor, told reporters following Khadr’s trial that he felt justice had been served. While he maintained Khadr’s juvenile status did not merit special consideration during the trial, he conceded it was important in sentencing.
“I think good prosecutors don’t always strive to get the greatest possible sentence but they balance interests,” Murphy said, adding, “I was very comfortable that the result we achieved was fair to everyone.”
But the case once again became politically charged this year - much to Washington’s consternation - as Canada’s Conservative government failed to act swiftly on Khadr’s application for transfer. Khadr’s lawyers accused the government of “abuse of process” for deliberately delaying a decision and made an application to the federal court.
Senior Obama administration officials told the Star last week that Washington’s patience with Ottawa was wearing thin and the Khadr case was jeopardizing future relations between the countries – although it is not clear if this pressured Ottawa to act.
Under Canada law, Khadr will now be eligible to apply for parole by next summer. Canada has tightened parole eligibility rules since 2006, and victims or their families now also have a greater say when it comes time to decide on a prisoner’s release.
In 2008, Khadr’s lawyers proposed a rehabilitation plan that included psychiatric treatment at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, religious counselling by a local imam and a tiered integration program that would see Khadr closely monitored for as long as four years.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Michelle Shephard, Tonda MacCharles
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