Welcome Back, Khadr

[Locutus]

h/t sda

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

US victims launch $44.7M civil case against Omar Khadr

OTTAWA — The American victims of convicted terrorist Omar Khadr are suing him for $44.7 million.

The suit was filed in a Utah court Wednesday, on behalf of Christopher Speer, the U.S. Army combat medic killed by Khadr in 2002, as well as his wife and young children, and another soldier, Layne Morris, who was injured and blinded by a grenade thrown by Khadr in Afghanistan.

Morris is asking for $2.5 million. He lost sight in one eye after shrapnel from a grenade tossed by Khadr severed his optic nerve.

Laura Tanner, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, said there is precedent for civil suits against terrorists.

"We sued (Omar's) father 10 years ago and were successful in getting a similar amount of money," she told QMI Agency. "This is based on the international terrorism statute, a remedy for victims of crime for behaviour conducted as a criminal terrorist."

According to documents filed with the Utah court: "Speer was placed in severe and prolonged extreme apprehension, suffered extreme fear, terror, anxiety, emotional, physical and psychological distress and trauma as a result of his injuries before his death."

A Canadian citizen, Khadr was 15 years old when he fought in Afghanistan with al-Qaida against U.S. soldiers.

His now-deceased father, Ahmed Khadr, had ties to the terror group and reportedly brought two of his sons to train with operatives in and near Afghanistan.

Khadr was detained in Guantanamo Bay for a decade. In 2010, the Americans handed Khadr an eight-year sentence -- with the chance to return to Canada -- for pleading guilty to war crimes, including the murder of Speer.

After being repatriated to finish his sentence in Canada last year, Khadr was later transferred to a medium-security prison, the Bowden Institution, this past February.

Khadr has launched a lawsuit of his own, against the Canadian government, claiming $60 million. Khadr claims his charter rights were breached, that he was ill-treated by the feds as a minor, and wants money in punitive damages.

In an exclusive interview with Sun News, Morris slammed the Canadian government for "assisting" Khadr.

"Omar Khadr is being assisted by Western society and the Canadian government in particular," he said.

"We've got 30 years of the Khadr family and politicians making horrible decisions on that family and it coming back to bite all of us."


video and more:


Sun News : US victims launch $44.7M civil case against Omar Khadr

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

:blob4::wav::blob5:ccasion5::smilebox::blob6: :headbang: :blob8::cheers::blob:

 

[Praxius]

Pssh... So now the military can not only kill the people they're fighting (which is logical) but now want to sue the ones they can't.

You're in a combat zone, fighting an enemy and you and they are shooting and lobbing explosives at each other, you kill a bunch of them, they kill a couple of you, then you get injured and suddenly you cry foul and throw your arms in the air in frustration and demand a lawsuit?

Grow the fk up..... those are the risks when you are in the military and engage in military operations in a bloody conflict.

I'm not even touching on whether or not Omar was a minor / child soldier or even if he did lob the grenade.... in this situation that is irrelevant.

The point is that when you sign up to serve your country, there are risks you accept when doing so and two of those risks are injury and death.

Now the family of a dead soldier and a wounded soldier want to sue their enemy for something they signed up for and accepted?

What a fk'n crock.

 

[DaSleeper]

And you a.........

 

[EagleSmack]

The man without a country.

 

[captain morgan]

The man without a country.

He'll always have Afghanistan

 

[WLDB]

Given the guy doesn't have a penny this is a total waste of time and money, but its theirs to waste so go for it.

 

[captain morgan]

If they can successfully sue him on a civil basis, there may be an argument to pursue criminal charges that might result in jail time.

 

[gerryh]

And you a.........

Don't like the truth?

 

[BornRuff]

All of this really seems kind of absurd to me. If he had straight up murdered someone at his age back here in Canada, he most likely would have been out of jail years ago.

 

[Praxius]

And you a.........

Big whoop, tell me something I didn't know.

If these guys were off duty, away from a combat zone, walking the streets and attacked, sure... Sue away.

It was a time of war, they were in a combat zone, they were the ones who instigated the firefight based on the orders given to them, the people they were shooting at shot back.

This lawsuit is a farce and a lame attempt at a money grab which I'm pretty sure Omar doesn't have even if they won.

Just getting their 15 mins of fame.

 

[WLDB]

If they can successfully sue him on a civil basis, there may be an argument to pursue criminal charges that might result in jail time.

What criminal charges? He has already been tried and convicted criminally for the injuries and death that they are now suing him civilly for.

All of this really seems kind of absurd to me. If he had straight up murdered someone at his age back here in Canada, he most likely would have been out of jail years ago.

Possibly. But apparently killing in a war zone is a no-no. Go figure.

 

[BornRuff]

What criminal charges? He has already been tried and convicted criminally for the injuries and death that they are now suing him civilly for.

Saying he was "tried" might be a bit misleading because the Guantanamo Military Commission bears very little resemblance to what people in the west would consider a fair trail.

The whole thing was made up just for these specific cases.

They only need a two thirds majority of the jury is needed for a conviction, defendants are not entitled to see all evidence against them, it can be closed from outside scrutiny, and because the US calls them unlawful combatants, being acquitted doesn't even mean they have to let you go.

Facing that, he took a plea deal that would get him out of Gitmo, so he wasn't actually convicted.

I imagine that his defense in these cases will be that he only signed the plea deal because he thought it was his only way to get out of Gitmo.

Possibly. But apparently killing in a war zone is a no-no. Go figure.

Makes a lot of sense eh?

 

[captain morgan]

What criminal charges? He has already been tried and convicted criminally for the injuries and death that they are now suing him civilly for.

He was tried in the USA, this possible action could (potentially) take place in Canada.

It is unlikely, however, this is the most probable purpose of launching such a large lawsuit... $40+ million; everyone knows that he doesn't have a penny to his name

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Possibly. But apparently killing in a war zone is a no-no. Go figure.

Killing anywhere without justification is a no-no. One justification is "I'm a soldier, and this is a war zone." Khadr wasn't a soldier. So he's subject to criminal penalties and civil actions.

Pssh... So now the military can not only kill the people they're fighting (which is logical) but now want to sue the ones they can't.

You're in a combat zone, fighting an enemy and you and they are shooting and lobbing explosives at each other, you kill a bunch of them, they kill a couple of you, then you get injured and suddenly you cry foul and throw your arms in the air in frustration and demand a lawsuit?

Grow the fk up..... those are the risks when you are in the military and engage in military operations in a bloody conflict.

I'm not even touching on whether or not Omar was a minor / child soldier or even if he did lob the grenade.... in this situation that is irrelevant.

The point is that when you sign up to serve your country, there are risks you accept when doing so and two of those risks are injury and death.

Now the family of a dead soldier and a wounded soldier want to sue their enemy for something they signed up for and accepted?

What a fk'n crock.

There are laws in war. One of them is you only get to attack people if you're a soldier. If you're not a soldier, you're liable to criminal and civil penalties.

 

[BornRuff]

Killing anywhere without justification is a no-no. One justification is "I'm a soldier, and this is a war zone." Khadr wasn't a soldier. So he's subject to criminal penalties and civil actions.

There are laws in war. One of them is you only get to attack people if you're a soldier. If you're not a soldier, you're liable to criminal and civil penalties.

The problem I have with this is that he was a kid. He was a child soldier.

These people are apparently not subject to criminal penalties in the same way that any other person would be. They are tried in a kangaroo court that is clearly more biased towards convictions(only a 2/3rd majority of the jury is needed and the jury is made up soldiers) and denies them basic rights like being able to see the evidence against you and actually being let go if you are found not guilty.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

The problem I have with this is that he was a kid. He was a child soldier.

He wasn't a child soldier. He wasn't a soldier at all. He was a juvenile criminal non-combatant in a war zone. The U.S. chose to treat him as an adult, as we do with our own domestic criminals under certain circumstances. His sentence was appropriate, and on the light side for a war-crime murder.

These people are apparently not subject to criminal penalties in the same way that any other person would be. They are tried in a kangaroo court that is clearly more biased towards convictions(only a 2/3rd majority of the jury is needed and the jury is made up soldiers) and denies them basic rights like being able to see the evidence against you and actually being let go if you are found not guilty.

Khadr wasn't tried at all. He pled guilty. Had he been tried, he would have been tried under the same conditions as courts-martial in the U.S. And a unanimous verdict is not required in many U.S. jurisdictions for many crimes. Here is an interesting argument that the requirement of a unanimous verdict actually harms the accuracy of the judicial process. . .

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/fedderse/homepage/papers/jury.pdf

Finally, after he served his sentence he was released.

I have certain objections and reservations to the military commission system, and I think Khadr should have gotten time served. But I disagree that he should have been treated like a domestic civilian juvenile criminal, and I question your knowledge of criminal judicial procedure. Certainly many of the things you list as though they were universal minima of due process, in fact aren't.

 

[Tonington]

Tecumsehsbones, how does locus standi work in this case? I don't really have a dog in the fight, just curious about how it works in this case, with respect to things like where the injury happened and where the court that hears the case has jurisdiction.

 

[Tecumsehsbones]

Tecumsehsbones, how does locus standi work in this case? I don't really have a dog in the fight, just curious about how it works in this case, with respect to things like where the injury happened and where the court that hears the case has jurisdiction.

It's an incredible tangle. The whole field of extraterritoriality is all over the map. And there's the further question of whether the U.S. was an occupying power (in which case it could mostly apply its criminal law) or whether the Afghan government was the ruling jurisdiction. Then there's the whole tangle of whether a military power legitimately in the place it's in has the ability to try the crimes of people whose actions are against that military.

One huge problem is that international tribunals do not have precedential effect, so what happened at Nurnberg or in other tribunals is, at most, advisory.

Given my druthers, I'd have turned Khadr over to the Afghans as the locus, or to the Canadians as an allied, involved power whose citizen Khadr was. That would seem to cover most of the problems. I'm reasonably sure the Afghans would have been willing to defer to Canada.

But the effective answer to your question is that in Afghanistan and Iraq, our actions were dictated by politics, not law. And that's always dangerous.

 

[BornRuff]

He wasn't a child soldier. He wasn't a soldier at all. He was a juvenile criminal non-combatant in a war zone. The U.S. chose to treat him as an adult, as we do with our own domestic criminals under certain circumstances. His sentence was appropriate, and on the light side for a war-crime murder.

The nature of the war and the fact that he was a child doesn't really allow for any official classification as a soldier.

There was no choice between trying him as an adult or child. The system that the US put in place has no path for trying someone as a child.

Trying a kid caught up in a war with war crimes is pretty ridiculous.

Khadr wasn't tried at all. He pled guilty.

He accepted a plea deal that would allow him to be transferred to Canada. The choice was made while weighing the very biased and backwards tribunal he would have to go through otherwise.

Had he been tried, he would have been tried under the same conditions as courts-martial in the U.S.

No. The military commissions act set up a separate process that is different from the standard court martial process.

It is based on the the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but exempts significant parts of it.

"(1) The following provisions of this title shall not apply to trial by military commission under this chapter:
(A) Section 810 (article 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to speedy trial, including any rule of courts-martial relating to speedy trial.
(B) Sections 831(a), (b), and (d) (articles 31(a), (b), and (d) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to compulsory self-incrimination.
(C) Section 832 (article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice), relating to pretrial investigation."

And a unanimous verdict is not required in many U.S. jurisdictions for many crimes. Here is an interesting argument that the requirement of a unanimous verdict actually harms the accuracy of the judicial process. . .

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/fedderse/homepage/papers/jury.pdf

Finally, after he served his sentence he was released.

And remember how Rummy said that since they are unlawful combatants, being acquitted is no guarantee of release?

As for the jury, regardless of accuracy, do you disagree that requiring a 2/3rds majority instead of a unanimous decision increases the likelihood of conviction?

Do you think it is a bit biased if he is accused of murdering a member of the military, and everyone on the jury happens to be a member of the military?

I have certain objections and reservations to the military commission system, and I think Khadr should have gotten time served. But I disagree that he should have been treated like a domestic civilian juvenile criminal, and I question your knowledge of criminal judicial procedure. Certainly many of the things you list as though they were universal minima of due process, in fact aren't.

I do believe that having the right to see the evidence against you is a basic minimum of a legitimate trial.