Excerptcize

Writing in the Jurisprudence column at Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick has an excellent article up regarding the Obama administrations decision to try some Gitmo detainees in federal court, while continuing to try others before military tribunals and how that mess intersects with the plight of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr that we discussed below.  Her writing is superb and very enjoyable to read.  I’ll only excerpt briefly as you really should go read the whole thing, but it did prompt me to pose a question.

While discussing the ongoing case before the Supreme Court of Canada whose aim is to decide if the Canadian Government is to be compelled to advocate for Khadr’s release to Canadian authorities, Lithwick wonders:

If today’s oral arguments aren’t enough to convince the Canadian Supreme Court to intercede on Khadr’s behalf, maybe Holder’s announcement will be.

One can only hope that the facts alone are enough for the court to find in Omar’s favour; this is a man who was a 15 year old youth when initially captured.  He has languished in legal limbo for coming up on 8 years now.  We know that he has received serious mistreatment while in captivity and that that mistreatment may well qualify as torture.  I am not a lawyer and am not certain where the breach of this man’s charter rights occur.  Both the Federal Court of Appeals and Justice O’Reilly though have found this to be the case already.  It is now left to the Supreme Court to hopefully concur with their judgement.

In my earlier posting on this subject I was critical of Barack Obama for the two tiered system him and his attorney general have elected to go forward with; some cases moving to federal court, with others staying before the newly minted military tribunals.  Dhalia’s musing above has lead me to wonder if Obama/Holders motive in keeping Khadr before the tribunal is at least partially rooted in hoping to force Canada’s hand into taking Khadr into custody.  Are they intentionally signalling that our man will not receive a fair chance at justice, leaving the Canadian Supreme Court no option but to uphold the lower court decisions?  The US administration can no doubt use any help it can get in getting the detainees out of Gitmo.  Perhaps Obama is scratching his head wondering how much they’ve got to do to this guy before his government will step up to the plate for him.  Not enough so far anyways.  If the lower courts ruling is upheld it will be very interesting to see what the Harper Government’s response is.

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