Legal limbo

[sabotabby]

Omar Khadr is in "legal limbo." As far as I can tell, this means that while someone's finally acknowledged that holding a 15-year-old Canadian child in an American gulag as a war criminal was kind of a bad move, they still don't exactly know what to do with him.

For a brief refresher, Khadr is a Canadian who allegedly lived in bin Laden's compound, attended a military training camp, and killed an American soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan. At the time, he was 15. Under both Canadian and American law, a 15-year-old is ineligible to vote (and thus participate in the making of foreign policy), attend a school field trip without a note from his parents, or drive a car. He was, however, apparently old enough to be shot, arrested, shipped to Guantanamo Bay, tortured, charged, denied an independent medical examination, and held for five years. For those of you keeping track, that's a fourth of his life.

There's a consistency issue here, and it's not just in terms of how we define "terrorist" or "war crimes" or "enemy combatant" but in terms of how we define adulthood and enfranchisement. Allow me to advance the possibly unpopular proposal that, if we hold that a 15-year-old is too young to cast a ballot, he's too young to be charged in an adult court.

Of course, Khadr is no longer 15. He's 20, and he has yet to be convicted of any crime. Still, it's unlikely, after all this, that even if he's released, he will ever be a functional member of society. Guantanamo has nothing to do with protecting anyone from terrorists, and everything to do with breaking minds and spirits, sowing fear, creating the illusion that you're safe from terror just as long as you don't step out of line. As Amnesty International's Jumana Musa points out:

At this point more people have died of apparent suicides (at Guantanamo) than have faced trial before a military commission. I think that's a pretty ringing endorsement as to why these commissions need to go.

I'm not arguing that he didn't do it, by the way; I'm arguing that he can't be held legally responsible. Not unless we're willing to take on the considerably larger task of redefining what constitutes citizenship.

ETA: A decent Star editorial on the subject.

Comments

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

If you're 13, you can join the Ugandan Army (but your parents have to sign you up). Khadr wasn't conscripted, he volunteered, certainly something permitted (but not encouraged) under international humanitarian law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_soldier

One could say he cast his ballot when he cast his hand grenade; but can we say he was acting as a citizen of Canada when he did it?

[sabotabby]

One could say he cast his ballot when he cast his hand grenade; but can we say he was acting as a citizen of Canada when he did it?

He's a citizen of Canada whether he acted as one or not. I may disagree with a large portion of Canadian legislation, but I'm still subject to it (and presumably protected under it).

At any rate, we don't offer children the choice between ballots and hand grenades for a good reason—most aren't mature enough to handle either.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

Here is an interesting book review in The Tyee that compares and contrasts Khadr and an African child soldier:

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/06/11/KidCriminals/