Tarek Fatah's Blog, page 3

August 1, 2017

Ousted Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Omnipresent Gen. Raheel Sharif – India TV’s Rajat Sharma talks to Tarek Fatah on his show ‘Aap Ki Adalat’

In 2016, during my visit to India, I was hosted by ‘India TV’ in their prime time current affairs show ‘Aap Ki Adalat’ (Your Court). Millions saw me being interrogated on Live TV and that discussion was repeated many times.


Rajat SharmaAap Ki Adalat is an Indian television show that is hosted by Rajat Sharma. He is the CEO and chief editor of India TV channel. In 1992, the first episode was broadcast on the television channel Zee Tv. Later on, in 2004, Rajat Sharma and his wife set up their own channel India TV and broadcasting his show on India TV channel.


Since 1994, the audience has grown over the years because of the nonbiased interviews and talks on the show. Aap Ki Adalat is the first show on Indian Television which brings the different politicians, actors and sport-person on the platform for the interviews. Moreover, Open debates especially topics in politics are held in this show with public opinion.


The set up of this show looks like a real court where they appointed another celebrity as a judge and Rajat Sharma acts like a Lawyer to make the whole environment of the show like a real court.


Here is my one hour sitting in the court’s prisoner dock facing host Rajat Sharma before a live audience of hundreds of students.


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Published on August 01, 2017 06:16

July 31, 2017

Ousted Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Omnipresent Gen. Raheel Sharif – India TV’s Rajat Sharma talks to Tarek Fatah on his show ‘Aap Ki Adalat’

In 2016, during my visit to India, I was hosted by ‘India TV’ in their prime time current affairs show ‘Aap Ki Adalat’ (Your Court). Millions saw me being interrogated on Live TV and that discussion was repeated many times.


Aap Ki Adalat is an Indian television show that is hosted by Rajat Sharma. He is the CEO and chief editor of India TV channel. In 1992, the first episode was broadcast on the television channel Zee Tv. Later on, in 2004, Rajat Sharma and his wife set up their own channel India TV and broadcasting his show on India TV channel.


Since 1994, the audience has grown over the years because of the non-biased interviews and talks on the show. Aap Ki Adalat is the first show on Indian Television which brings the different politicians, actors and sport-person on the platform for the interviews. Moreover, Open debates especially topics in politics are held in this show with public opinion.


The set up of this show looks like a real court where they appointed another celebrity as a judge and Rajat Sharma acts like a Lawyer to make the whole environment of the show like a real court.


Here is my one hour sitting in the court’s prisoner dock facing host Rajat Sharma before a live audience of hundreds of students.


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Published on July 31, 2017 09:16

July 8, 2017

L’affaire Omar Khadr: Rex Murphy on how Trudeau skipped his theme socks as he schemed the Khadr apology

“Three things mark the Khadr announcement. The government didn’t want to be associated with it. They wanted it done swiftly. And they didn’t want Trudeau on the same continent when the news broke”

                                                                                        – Rex Murphy

National Post Masthead


2017-07-08_17-43-11


… and started like a guilty thing upon a fearful summons.


— Hamlet


July 7, 2017

Rex Murphy

The National Post


How and when Canadians were let in on the Trudeau government’s lavish settlement and accompanying official apology to Omar Khadr are its most curious and telling elements. No cabinet minister, and certainly not Justin Trudeau, stepped before a bank of microphones and cameras to bring the good news to Canadians before it was a done deal. How unlike Trudeau to put a blanket over his good deeds — more usually he orders up another pair of billboard socks to mark such occasions. No socks for Khadr.


We learned of it from Ottawa’s scoop master, Robert Fife. Fife is a reporter, not a Liberal spokesman. No spokesman was provided for days. The word, as it were, just got out. And it’s surely a coincidence that it got out at the tail end of our Canada Day celebrations, and on the eve of morning of the American’s Fourth of July.


Wedged in between competing fireworks, so to speak. Was there anyone in the Canadian government who thought this tendentious settlement was a good way to end our national birthday party and send a message to the Americans at the beginning of theirs? However we feel about Khadr’s various doings, the Americans are still more than a little sensitive on this score. Was the timing, then, incidentally or accidentally, a diplomatic shot in the ribs to the Americans, a touch of impishness or sly scorn towards Trumpian America?


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, holds up a pair of socks that he received as a gift from Kelly Ripa, centre, and Ryan Seacrest in Niagara Falls, Ontario on Monday, June 5, 2017. Aaron Lynett / CP

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, holds up a pair of socks that he received as a gift from Kelly Ripa, centre, and Ryan Seacrest in Niagara Falls, Ontario on Monday, June 5, 2017. Aaron Lynett / CP


The bells were still tolling for Canada’s birthday and Trudeau headed off to Ireland when the news was leaked. So he was


So he was conveniently across the sea and on another continent by the time people were shaking their heads over the vast cash award, all but immune to having to answer questions about it. The travelling press caravan did get one question to him, and his comment — it’s a magical piece of work — had more blarney in it than the famous stone itself: “There is a judicial process underway that has been underway for a number of years now and we are anticipating, like I think a number of people are, that that judicial process is coming to its conclusion.”


The travelling press caravan did get one question to him, and his comment — it’s a magical piece of work — had more blarney in it than the famous stone itself: “There is a judicial process underway that has been underway for a number of years now and we are anticipating, like I think a number of people are, that that judicial process is coming to its conclusion.”


“There is a judicial process underway that has been underway for a number of years now and we are anticipating, like I think a number of people are, that that judicial process is coming to its conclusion.”


If this be transparency let us have mud. Clams are more open. If there is information in that statement, it is under armed guard and in witness protection. Drop the padding and what we have is this: there is a process, there has been a process, and Trudeau and an unspecified number of people think this process will end. If he had just added, “And a proof is a proof, and when you have a good proof, it’s proven” we could embed this glory right under the Gettysburg address in the quotation books.


No naming of Khadr. No mention of the dollar sum. No reference to the apology. No commiserating remarks for Tabitha Speer, the wife of the dead American medic. Equally stunning, Trudeau neglected to highlight its “diversity,” which for any Justin Trudeau statement is the equivalent of going to bed without saying your night prayers.


On Thursday, we had the capper. Fife again — he is quickly becoming the Paul Revere of all Khadr news — gave us the revelations that the $10.5 million, tax free be it noted, had already been handed over. Process complete. A government famously so sluggish in so many areas — veterans’ treatment comes first to mind — went full Road Runner getting the cash to Khadr.


Three things mark the Khadr announcement. The government didn’t want in any visible way to be associated with it. They wanted it done swiftly and with maximum distraction. And they didn’t want Trudeau on the same continent when the news broke.


Why so coy, it must be asked? Why would Trudeau and his government, having done, as I am sure in later days they will emphatically insist, the right thing, the just thing, the principled thing, the Charter-compliant thing, be so shy of association with their own high righteousness?


Most likely because there are so many questions about the Khadr absolution and jackpot he doesn’t want to answer or cannot.


Why the outlandish amount? Does not repatriation, removal from the American system of justice, and a full apology from the entire government of Canada signify a generous correction by the Canadian state of what it perceives as the wrongs done to Khadr?


What does he think is the response of Canadian soldiers, particularly veterans of Afghanistan, to this deal? I’d say they are furious. He owes the servicemen and women an accounting. If he is confident of the rightness of the award, the amount, the instant payment, and the state apology, he owes them his thinking on the matter. Not some jumbled vapourizing on process mumbled reluctantly over shamrocks and sock displays in Ireland.


Finally, the judicial process. Trudeau was slippery when he talked of “anticipating” the “judicial process is coming to its conclusion.” No such thing. He had amputated the judicial process when he made those remarks. Took it out of the courts and straight to lavish settlement. Premier Brad Wall made the point as well as any: “… there ought never be an offer to ‘settle.’ Some things are worth the legal fight … right to the end.”


There is as much politics as justice involved in the Khadr settlement. In fact, there’s much more. And the manner and timing of how it has been “resolved” is a straightline indication that the political dimension is at least as powerful as the judicial one. It’s summer now, and sunny days, but fall will come, with a good chance of a long winter too on this business.

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Published on July 08, 2017 15:40

L’affaire Omar Khadr: Prime Minister Trudeau’s War Doctrine of “Sock and Awe”

Masthead Toronto Sun


July 4, 2017


Tarek Fatah

The Toronto Sun


Two news stories concerning terrorism should make Canadians realize that not only are we being governed under the doctrine of ‘sock and awe’, but that our values have turned upside down in a bizarro world, one of our own making.


First to Israel where on Monday, the government revealed it has filed a precedent-setting lawsuit against the family of a terrorist who drove a truck into a group of military personnel killing four Israeli soldiers.


Attacker Fadi al-Qunbar was shot dead shot and killed in January, and the matter would have rested there. But this time Israel has made the landmark decision to sue against any inheritance the terrorist left to his family. The lawsuit, which is expected to be the first of many similar cases, demands a total of more than $2.3 million.


Israel’s Minister of the Interior Arye Dery told the Haaretz newspaper, “From now on, anyone who plots, plans or considers carrying out a terrorist attack will know that his family will pay a heavy price for his deed.”


Not so in Canada.


On the same day as the terrorist Fadi al-Qumbar was being penalized by Israel, in Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government announced that convicted terrorist Omar Khadr who in October 2010 had pleaded guilty to “murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, spying, conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism,” was to receive a $10M ‘compensation’ for his troubles and an official apology from the Government of Canada.


Khadr3Mr. Khadr, now 30, was 15 in July 2002 when he lived in an Afghan compound with a group of bomb-building Islamic jihadis planting roadside explosives. Afterwards, U.S. troops stormed the house and this is where a grenade thrown by Khadr killed Sergeant Christopher Speer, a medic who was helmetless and dressed in Afghan clothing.


It is true that at the time Omar Khadr committed his act of terror and murder, he was only 15 years old, but in the context of the war against civilization by Islamic terrorists, be they from the Taliban, ISIS, Al-Shabab or Boko Haram, the vast number of volunteers who have taken up arms and carried out war crimes are in their teens.


For bleeding-heart liberals whose guilt-ridden frame of mind cannot comprehend beyond the storybook picture of the child soldiers hired by African war lords, this may be a shock, but the ultimate hero of Muslims in the part of the world Omar Khadr was photographed making IEDs, is the 8th century 17-year old Arab invader of India called Muhammad Bin Qasim, and from Kabul to Karachi every child jihadi wishes to emulate the rape and plunder of this Arab jihadi. We are not dealing with the God’s Army in Uganda or the Liberian child soldiers of the 1990s.


The Muslim boys who go to fight jihad do so not under any pressure, but for the lure of entering Paradise and meeting the opposite gender for the first time. This may sound bizarre to the non-Muslim, but trust me, this is not fiction nor propaganda.


But there may still be some poetic justice in the end.


Tabitha Speer, the widow of Sargent Speer who, moved to finalize a default civil-suit judgment against Omar Khadr. The court granted the plaintiffs a total of US$134.1 million in damages


It would be sweet revenge if the $10M ‘compensation’ went straight from Omar Khadr’s pockets to Sgt. Speer’s widow.

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Published on July 08, 2017 15:39

L’affaire Omar Khadr: Under Islamic beliefs, Khadr was no child, writes Farzana Hassan

Toronto Sun LogoJuly 5, 2017


Farzana Hassan

The Toronto Sun


Ever since the Trudeau government’s reported $10 million-plus settlement with Omar Khadr became public, one aspect of the debate has centred around whether he was responsible for his actions at the age of 15.


Accepted Islamic belief confirms the age of maturity at puberty.


For boys, this is marked by the appearance of facial hair, a deepening of voice, and other, less visible, hormonal changes.


For girls, the onset of menstruation denotes womanhood.


These milestones are established in Islamic orthodoxy, and their significance is implied in the laws of various Islamic countries.


Not only is marriage condoned at a very young age, but punishment and retribution are also determined on the basis of who is considered an adult.


For example, the current Iranian penal code sets the age of maturity under sharia law for girls at nine years and for boys at 15.


(This violates international standards, which generally set legal responsibility at 18 for both sexes.)


Khadr boyKhadr was 15 at the time of the criminal acts of which he was convicted. According to accepted Islamic practice, he was by no means a child.


It is only in our more benign judicial system that someone 15 years old who commits a serious crime is treated differently than an adult.


So, should Khadr receive the sort of compensation Trudeau is reportedly offering? According to Islamic protocol, certainly not.


Khadr admitted to throwing the fatal grenade that killed an American medic, and he accepted the conviction as part of a plea bargain, even if he later said he confessed only to get out of Guantanamo to serve the rest of his time in Canada.


In Canada, even people wrongfully convicted of a crime do not automatically receive compensation.


As the website of the Ontario Attorney General notes: “In recent years, there has been growing recognition in Canada and elsewhere that persons who have been wrongfully convicted and imprisoned should receive compensation from the state. Despite this growing recognition, there is no legal entitlement in Canada to compensation either by way of a statutory scheme or otherwise.”


On what basis is Trudeau offering such generous compensation, and an official apology to Khadr for his treatment in Guantanamo Bay, where he was imprisoned by Americans, not Canadians?


(The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled in 2010 that Canada violated Khadr’s constitutional rights when CSIS and foreign affairs officials interviewed him, knowing he had been sleep-deprived, and shared the information with U.S. investigators.)


It is only in Trudeau’s Canada that such naive acquiescence to Islamist extremism can allow someone like Khadr to be rewarded in this fashion.


It is only in Trudeau’s Canada that terror-related offences, albeit committed by a child under Canadian, rather than Islamic law, can receive such leniency.


There are people in Canada who will continue to play the victim card and quash any legitimate debate of the heinous Islamist practices connected with Khadr’s case.


Orthodox Islamists in this country know how Islam defines adulthood, but have chosen to stay mum about it in this case.


Now would have been a good time for them to show their enlightened credentials by repudiating what Khadr did, siding with Canadian taxpayers and protesting these misguided moves by the Trudeau government.


Instead, the Khadr case allows Canadian Islamists to gloat about yet another victory in this country for their brand of extremism.

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Published on July 08, 2017 15:37

L’affaire Omar Khadr: Former U.S. diplomat David T. Jones writes, “Canadian fibrillations over Khadr reflect simple anti-Americanism and are a caricature of reality”

“Omar Khadr was the luckiest teenager in the world and remains one of the world’s most fortunate adults. Just how many times in combat does an enemy kill the unit medic and survive to be captured? Let alone that Khadr was operating outside any formal, national military framework and instead, fighting de facto as part of a terrorist gang. That he was not summarily executed is apparently irrelevant to Canadians.”

Masthead Toronto Sun


July 7, 2017


David T. Jones

The Toronto Sun


Canadians are being treated to the latest episode in the long-running Omar Khadr sob story. Now, he’s getting $10.5 million and a grovelling apology from the Canadian government.


The outraged widow of the U.S. medic killed by Khadr is dissed in Canadian media with story titles such as, “Widow goes after money Canada will give ex-Gitmo prisoner” (doubtless a greedy money grubber), and comments such as Khadr is only “alleged to have killed” his victim as a “child soldier” when he confessed to the killing.


(Khadr later said he only confessed so he could be transferred from Guantanamo to serve out his sentence in Canada).


Nevertheless, it is useful to review the record to remind Canadians of the Khadr reality — not the “poor little boy/child soldier” legend perpetrated by media driven by hostility to the United States and/or the previous Stephen Harper government in Canada.


Omar Khadr, was convicted of killing a U.S. Army medic and severely wounded (blinding in one eye) another U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002.


Khadr, who was 15 years old at the time, was fighting as an illegal combatant for the Taliban when, rejecting calls to surrender, he grenaded the U.S. soldiers.


Although themselves wounded, U.S. forces effectively treated Khadr and subsequently transferred him to the Guantanamo prison facility, where in October, 2010 he pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to eight years in prison (not including time served).


The Canadian fibrillations over Khadr reflect simple anti-Americanism and are a caricature of reality.


Omar Khadr was the luckiest teenager in the world and remains one of the world’s most fortunate adults. Just how many times in combat does an enemy kill the unit medic and survive to be captured?


Let alone that Khadr was operating outside any formal, national military framework and instead fighting de facto as part of a terrorist gang.


That he was not summarily executed is apparently irrelevant to Canadians.


These critics of U.S. action expend not a scintilla of concern for the widow and perpetually fatherless children of the murdered medic (and the blinded U.S. soldier often goes unmentioned).


Somehow, Khadr became the victim — as if Canadians should be able to travel the world, kill U.S. soldiers, and suffer no consequences (particularly if they do so under the age of 18).


Recalling history and the individual capabilities of teenagers, an American might conclude that if Khadr was old enough to be throwing grenades, he was old enough to imprison.


After protracted legal pushing and pulling, Khadr was transferred to a Canadian prison and ultimately released in May, 2015.


Following his release, Khadr was lauded as heroic, free to milk his miraculous survival into profit.


Ultimately, nevertheless, there may be a legal comedownance to his expectations of riches.


The widow of the murdered medic, and the blinded former soldier, sued Khadr in a Utah district court, and were awarded US $102 million which was essentially uncollectable at the time.


However, the 2012 Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act allows for the collection of damages from U.S. judgments in Canadian courts.


Now they are attempting to block the government of Canada’s $10.5 million payment to Khadr, and obtain appropriate compensation.


Khadr is far from finished paying for his crimes.


Jones is a retired senior U.S. State Department diplomat who served as political minister counsellor at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa.

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Published on July 08, 2017 15:35

L’affaire Omar Khadr: Macleans Magazine on “The shady business of paying Omar Khadr”

macleans_logo


July 7, 2017


Terry Glavin

Macleans Magazine


Well. That was quick.


Only five days into a national bedlam of opprobrium and sanctimony that began with rumours that Ottawa intended to say sorry and shell out $10.5 million to make amends for ignoring the constitutional rights of the famous Gitmo boy-terrorist Omar Khadr, and all of a sudden, the deal is already done, the cheque’s already been cut, and Khadr’s already cashed it.


Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale expended a great deal of effort on Friday to the purpose of appearing righteous and proper, and went so far as to lay blame on the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper: “The Harper government could have repatriated Mr. Khadr or otherwise resolved the matter,” Goodale said. “They didn’t.”


 That is going to leave a mark. But not on the Conservatives.

The misdeeds Goodale was insisting we should all atone for—the specific trespasses upon Khadr’s constitutional rights that Goodale cited to justify the government’s sudden sorry-saying and cash payout—were committed in 2002 and 2003, before Harper’s government was in power. At the time, Goodale himself was a member of Paul Martin’s Liberal cabinet.


If the intention of the deal was as Goodale said—to cut Canada’s losses in the $20 million civil litigation Khadr’s lawyers initiated in 2004, and help Khadr escape his notoriety and get on with his life at last, which he does deserve—this is not how it’s done.


In his lawsuit, Khadr contended that Canada conspired with the American military 14 years ago by allowing Canadian intelligence officials to elicit statements from him about the terrorism charges he was facing at Guantanamo Bay, without allowing him any access to a lawyer. Canada effectively collaborated with U.S. military authorities in Khadr’s brutal mistreatment. In sum, he was abused in a way that “offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects,” as the Supreme Court of Canada described it, in a 2010 decision.


A loss-cutting settlement might make eminent sense, but the whirlwind was allowed to clatter along all week without so much as a proper media briefing, an official statement, a formal explanation or even a single honest and candid answer—not even when the question was put directly to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a press conference in Ireland. Absurdly, neither the payout amount nor the wording of the apology were mentioned Friday, owing to the deal’s confidentiality provisos.


Donald Trump’s White House had been “pre-informed” about the settlement, but all week Canadians have been obliged to rely on assumptions, unnamed sources and conjecture, drawing from all the usual reservoirs of prejudice and partisan bias in speculation about the political considerations that went into the deal and the political embarrassments it was intended to avoid.


After 13 years, suddenly a deal is cut, only three weeks after a faint-hope U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act injunction application to block any payout to Khadr was filed in Ontario Superior Court on behalf of Tabitha Speer, the widow of Delta Force Sergeant Christopher Speer, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2002 by a hand grenade that Khadr may or may not have thrown.


Khadr was only 15 when he was taken into custody after being horribly wounded in a Taliban firefight with U.S. Special Forces. He pleaded guilty to the charge of murdering Speer, then later claimed he’d copped a plea only to get transferred to a Canadian prison, and has since claimed he does not trust his own memory of throwing the grenade. Now 30, Khadr was released on bail two years ago, pending his appeal of his several dubious military-court convictions in Guantanamo, and lives in Edmonton.


Tabitha Speer and Layne Morris, a since-retired U.S. Special Forces officer wounded in the 2002 firefight when Khadr was captured, were seeking to block any federal payout to Khadr. They were relying on the strength of a 2006 Utah District Court default award of $134 million for Sergeant’s Speer’s wrongful death and Morris’ loss of the sight in his right eye.


On Friday, lawyers acting for Speer and Morris were in Ontario Superior Court seeking a date for an “urgent” hearing. The whole effort looks moot now, but lawyer David Winer told reporters he may seek an interim preservation order, which would have the effect of freezing Khadr’s assets.


The strange rush to settle has left the Trudeau government facing the prospect of having to explain why Omar Khadr deserves justice, but the widow of an American soldier who died in a battle when Omar Khadr was a fighter on the other side, does not.


It is also worse than awkward that we’ve all been left to surmise that the Khadr deal takes its precedent from the 2007 settlement in the quite dissimilar case of Maher Arar.


Arar was awarded $10 million and a fulsome apology in 2007 after a judicial inquiry determined that misleading information from the RCMP may have played a part in a decision by American authorities to trundle Arar off to Bashar al-Assad’s torture dungeons in Syria. The inquiry concluded that Arar was in no way linked to terrorism.


At the time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper described the Arar affair as “a tremendous injustice.” The apology to Arar came by way of a both an official government statement and a unanimous House of Commons resolution.


In contrast, Omar Khadr was raised in an infamous Egyptian-Palestinian “al Qaeda family” whose many members spent years in Osama bin Laden’s inner circle in Taliban-held regions of Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s jihadist badlands. Omar’s teenage skill set included proficiency in the assembly of sophisticated improvised explosive devices.


RELATED: Widow of U.S. soldier goes after Khadr payout


An all-party apology would seem unlikely in Khadr’s case, especially in the way developments have unfolded this week. Opposition leader Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are not in a very forgiving or apologetic mood. Not every MP in the Liberal caucus is happy about the way this has come together, either.


This is not the sort of thing that just blows over and fades away.

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Published on July 08, 2017 15:19

L’affaire Omar Khadr: From Bomb-making, Convicted Killer to Multi-Millionaire

Toronto Sun Logo


July 5, 2017


By Mark Bonokoki

The Toronto Sun


In the bombed-out and bullet-riddled al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan where Omar Khadr was the only survivor, albeit shot up and near death, U.S. military personnel found a very telling video.


It showed Khadr, 15 when captured, helping another al-Qaida bomb-maker put together improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the kind that killed so many of our Canadian soldiers during their deployment in the volatile eastern fringes of Afghanistan.


He appeared as calm as a cucumber while making those roadside bombs, as nonchalant as if he were doing nothing more than building a castle from a Lego set.


Former Conservative defence minister Jason Kenney put a number to the carnage that IEDs such as those inflicted.


He did it in the form of a tweet Wednesday when word got out that the Trudeau Liberals were about to cut a $10.5 million cheque to Khadr and his lawyers to settle his civil suit against Canada, and apologize to him for Canada not running to his rescue. The number was 97. Ninety-seven of the 159 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan were killed by IEDs.


“Odious,” tweeted Kenney. “Confessed terrorist who assembled & planted the same kind of IEDs that killed 97 Canadians to be given $10 million by Justin Trudeau.”


2017-07-08_17-16-32

In retrospect, Kenney was mistaken. He was off by a half-million, but what’s $500,000 more when it is going to such a good cause?


Maybe Khadr’s family can finally go off welfare now that their most famous son has hit the jackpot, but that is likely too much to ask from a family whose citizenship to Canada is one of convenience — a place where medical bills are paid by taxpayers, and where doors welcome them when they return home like they did after fleeing Osama bin Laden’s hideaway following 9/11.


We are such an accommodating country. Khadr2


Khadr confessed to murder during a U.S. military tribunal as part of plea deal that eventually brought him back to Canada and saw him freed, though has subsequently suggested he did so because he was “left with a hopeless choice,” imprisonment and torture in the U.S.


He now suggests he doesn’t remember whether he tossed the grenade from that aforementioned Afghanistan compound that killed U.S. Army Sgt. Christopher Speer.


David Milgaard got $10 million from the Canadian government but, unlike Khadr, he had killed no one.


Instead, he was wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of nursing assistant Gail Miller, and spent 23 years behind bars for a crime that forensic science proved he did not commit.


Miller’s real killer, serial rapist Larry Fisher, was eventually convicted and, in June of 2015, had the decency to die prison.


He was likely the only good thing he had ever done.


What we have now, basically, is Canada rewarding its citizens for being terrorists. For up-and-coming jihadists planning to embrace the sadistic brutality of ISIS, Rule No. 1 will undoubtedly be to pack their Canadian passports, along with the contact number for a Canadian lawyer with liberal views and an expertise in civil litigation.


If Omar Khadr can win the lottery by playing the duped “child soldier” card — even after making IEDs with the best of them, and tossing a bull’s eye with a grenade -— then who knows what awaits at the end of the rainbow for like-minded followers.


It may not be paradise, but it could be a pot of gold. Ten-point-five million is nothing to sneeze at. But it’s more than enough to make right-thinking Canadians choke, and wonder if true justice has finally lost its way.

—–

markbonokoski@gmail.com

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Published on July 08, 2017 14:30

May 6, 2017

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