The CBA is obsessed. A search of its website yields 232 items about Khadr. What about other Canadians trapped overseas, such as Huseyn Celil, a Canadian citizen currently being held on trumped-up charges by China, or William Sampson, who was held and tortured in Saudi Arabia? They are non-persons to the CBA -- no press releases for them, and no mentions on its website.
At any one time, there are typically about 1,000 Canadians detained overseas, most of them for good reason. In Khadr's case, he is charged with murdering a U. S. soldier, Christopher Speer, in Afghanistan, where Khadr had gone as part of his jihad.
Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention is pretty clear on the rights of people caught in Khadr's circumstances: If someone isn't part of a chain of command, doesn't wear a flag or emblem "recognizable at a distance," doesn't bear their weapons "openly" and doesn't follow the "laws and customs of war," they don't have rights as a prisoner of war. Khadr didn't do any of those things.
In the past, when Allied troops caught enemy combatants breaching those rules -- like some Germans did on D-Day-- they were shot on sight, or subject to expedited trials on the spot. Not Khadr; His life was saved by U. S. medics and he was flown to Guantanamo, where he has received food, shelter, a Koran and an imam -- and free lawyers. Sgt. Speer was flown home, too -- to a graveyard.
So why the Legal Left's apparently uncontrollable urges for Omar Khadr?
What's up with that? Why him and not anyone else?
Ezra points out that, although Khadr was captured in 2002, while the Liberals were in power, the CBA didn't make a stink about it until after the Conservatives came to power in 2006.
