Guantanamo Bay and Canada

By Fiorella Bafundo

The government of Canada is asking for the release of a Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr, from the prison in Cuba Guantanamo Bay and his return to the country. Khadr was imprisoned in 2002 after being captured in Afghanistan at the age of 15 years old because “he was accused of killing an American soldier with a hand grenade during a battle in which he was seriously wounded.” The Canadian government says that under the Canadian Constitution the rights of the detainee have been violated and his lawyer, William C. Kuebler, said that “the combination of the Obama administration’s decision to shut Guantánamo and the Canadian court decision should be the end of the matter.” Otherwise “it would be just ridiculous.”
In addition to not being brought to trial, Mr. Khadr said that during his imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay he has been abused by American officers. All in all, he constitutes “the last Western citizen held by the United States at the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba.”