Via Fox News
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave Omar Khadr a big payout, but the terrorist’s real victims may never see any of that money.
Canada agreed to pay the former Guantanamo prisoner a reported $8 million in a lawsuit alleging civil rights violations. The settlement included an apology.
The Canadian-born Khadr was 15 in 2002 when he tossed a grenade in a firefight that killed U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a special forces medic.
Tabitha Speer, the soldier’s widow, and Layne Morris, who was blinded in the firefight, won a $134 million wrongful-death default judgment against Khadr two years ago in Utah.
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JUDGE DENIES REQUEST TO FREEZE EX-GITMO PRISONER’S ASSETS
Lawyers for the widow and Morris requested an order freezing Khadr’s assets, but last week a Canadian judge threw out the request, calling it “extraordinary.”
Conservative Member of the Canadian Parliament and official opposition critic for foreign affairs Peter Kent wrote in The Wall Street Journal Monday that the timing of the payout undermines Tabitha Speer’s legal options to collect on the judgment.
He added that Trudeau’s actions “are an affront to the memory of Christopher Speer, to Tabitha Speer and her children, to Layne Morris, to our U.S. allies and to all men and women in uniform.”
He also called the settlement “a cynical subversion” of Canadian principles.
“Mr. Trudeau made Omar Khadr a millionaire, and he didn’t have to,” Kent wrote.
Trudeau said last week that it could have cost more than $30 million if the case was not settled.
“The measure of a society, of a just society, is not whether we stand up for people’s rights when it’s easy or popular to do so, it’s whether we recognize rights when it’s difficult, when it’s unpopular,” he said. “We are a society that stands up for peoples’ rights, and when governments fail to respect peoples’ rights we all end up paying. I think that is the lesson that hopefully future governments will draw from this settlement.”
Khadr sued the Canadian government for $16 million in 2015 after he was released on bail. He claimed he was tortured at Gitmo.
Morris told Fox News last week that “it was just crazy that you would give someone like that $8 million because his feelings got hurt. I know he spent time in Guantanamo. That was due to his own actions.”
Tabitha Speer hasn’t commented on the settlement to Khadr.
She last updated her Facebook page in June with a photo of her husband and their two young children, Taryn and Tanner. The children are now teens.
TRUDEAU DEFENDS MULTIMILLION PAYOUT TO EX-GITMO INMATE
“Everyone wants to say he’s the child, he’s the victim. I don’t see that. My children are the victims.”
In 2010, she confronted Khadr from the witness stand at the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal after Khadr struck a plea deal.
“My husband was a good man,” Speer told Khadr, according to a story at the time in the Albuquerque Journal. “You will forever be a murderer in my eyes.”
The paper reported that the widow urged the jury to reject arguments that Khadr, the son of an Al Qaeda leader, deserved a break.
“Everyone wants to say he’s the child, he’s the victim,” the widow said. “I don’t see that. My children are the victims.”
In a 2005 court affidavit in a lawsuit against Khadr, Speer recalled the day her husband was deployed.
“I reflected on what a great marriage and family we had,” she said. “I thought we would be together forever to watch our children grow. I had no idea that within days, my world would be torn apart.”
She also recalled in the affidavit her feelings when she returned home to North Carolina from Germany.
“I could not fathom how empty our house was,” she said. “I sat in the middle of the living room floor, explaining to Taryn what happened to Daddy. This was the hardest thing I have ever done. I needed to be strong for Taryn and Tanner, but needed to grieve myself. Telling a little girl her daddy would not be coming home was excruciating.”
Maybe a member of the SEAL Teams will extract justice.
This was one soldier killing and maiming other soldiers on the field of battle and then becoming a pow.
It was probably stupid of Canada to pay him money but it is also stupid of us to grieve more for these two soldiers and their families then for any other guy killed or wounded in battle.
Good way of putting it Red. I don’t see how it is any different then any other war. Those soldiers in Afghanistan weren’t working for the peace corps. They showed up at that camp to kill him and all his friends. What do folks expect him to do. Make tea and crumpets while they are dispatching everyone in the compound.
Calling him an enemy combatant is pretty slippery slope. Could same be now done to our soldiers sent abroad. I’d rather have some rules for prisoners rather than current shitshow. Either Geneva Conventions are upheld or it is the law of the jungle and every man for himself.
Still to make it right maybe the .gov.ca should cut a cheque for the widow and that blinded soldier. Not going to break a country of 35 million people. Once done then promise the world that Canada won’t let this happen again.
Trudeau. Khadr. Judge. We’re all thinking the same thing. We just can’t write it.
The world has been turned upside down. Intentionally.
I’m really a bit sickened to discover UP has been officially declared DOWN.
And we were the invading army in Afghanistan, invading a country that had not attacked us. The Taliban were simply presented with an ultimatum (not evidence) to hand over Osama bin Laden or else. We certainly would not hand over someone without evidence. To the day he is alleged to have been killed, OBL’s FBI most wanted page NEVER listed the attacks of 9-11 as crimes he was accused of. Interesting….no? The US NEVER declared war on Afghanistan. Our war was a destruction, invasion, and occupation of unjustified aggression. That citizens responded to repel the invading army is what we should expect of ANY citizen under the same circumstances. Labels like “al Qaeda leader” are bandied about freely by US government officials looking for cover for their actions. If there was evidence against this boy 17 years ago, why was he not charged, etc. or simply returned as a former POW as is done in every other conflict. There was NO REASON for ANY soldier to EVER step foot on Afghanistan soil. I feel sorry for the family’s loss, but there are millions of dead Afghanis and Iraqis whose only crime was being citizens of a country the US Empire targeted in its latest campaign to control natural resources, drugs, oil, etc. for the benefit of the globalists who control our government. Who cries for all of them (as future wars of aggression are being actively planned)?
The video makes it look like it was Trudeau’s decision while it is actually a judicial one. Our polititians do not and can not interfere with Supreme Court decisions.
The Supreme Court only agreed that Khadr’s rights were violated by successive Liberal and Conservative government’s inaction on his behalf. The Supreme Court did not decree that Khadr must be compensated monetarily.
Khadr had a civil suit against the government for his mistreatment and was asking $20 million in compensation. The federal government did not wait for a judicial ruling in the civil case. They paid off Khadr and tried to make the argument that waiting for the court case to be resolved would cost more money. Problem is, now Trudeau owns the decision to pay Khadr and can’t blame the courts for forcing the payout.
Trudeau’s favorite show was “Welcome Back Cotter”.
Nice play on words. 5 snaps in my book.
only fools fight an enemy overseas while the leaders and system stab them in the back
How is it possibly considered a crime to throw a grenade at a member of of an an invading military that just bombed your home and killed everyone you know? If Omar Khadr actually managed to do that it was clearly self defense. Even if he actually was accused of or committed anything resembling a crime (which he wasn’t) he was a goddamn child who was tortured which is against international law, American law, Canadian law, the Law of armed conflict, and anything resembling morarility and human decency. Of course he deserves that settlement which doesn’t even come close to justice. At the very least every person responsible for and complicent in his
detention and torture should be in prison. I don’t understand how anyone could critisize him or claim he is a terrorist or murderer. Based on what possible legal or moral justification? Is it the law that Americans can invade and kill whoever wherever in the world and nobody has the right defend themselves?