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

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

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.

That's a rosy way to look at it... They just messed up and they'll legally screw him better when they next lay new charges.

You complain that he was old enough to be shot and arrested, after he tossed a hand-grenade? Come on. That's well-deserved of anyone tossing a hand-grenade in a combat situation.

As for the rest, no one deserves it, so his age has little to do with it. Sure, it's worse because he's young. But there's little debate among us that it shouldn't happen to anyone. He should be sent to a civilian court, where a judge would determine how he could be charged and at what level.

As for the citizenship issue, the failure of two (or three?) successive Canadian governments to demand his release (like the British did) is even more galling, in my eyes. In terms of citizenship, our government has more to answer than even the U.S., although that's because of the U.S. behaviour, in this particular case. It's one thing to torture "enemy combatants", it's even worse when you see your friends do it to one of your own citizens and not bat an eyelash.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Ehhh, I don't like my tone in this comment. Disregard tone. :P