OTTAWA – The Green Party of Canada wishes to commend the Harper Conservatives for finally repatriating Omar Khadr from the infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The Greens have been advocating his return to Canada for over 4 years.
“Omar Khadr’s rights as a Canadian and as a child were not respected. He was abandoned in his Guantanamo cell by the Harper Conservatives. He was not treated in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. His repatriation comes too late, but it is nonetheless welcomed,” said Elizabeth May, Green Party of Canada Leader and MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
Khadr has spent nearly a decade in Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He is the first person since the Second World War to be prosecuted in a military Tribunal for war crimes committed while still a minor. He was convicted, after confessing under torture, and remained there even though he was to be returned to Canada to serve out the rest of his prison term.
Joe Foster, Human Rights Critic for the Green Party of Canada, questioned, ”How can we, as Canadians, stand by when our values for justice and human rights have been violated? Can we allow our feeling towards the Khadr family prejudice our sense of what is fundamentally right?”
The 2012 Green Party Convention during its policy deliberations stated: “We will require that any evidence gained by illegal or unlawful means, including by torture, shall not be admissible in either open or closed court hearings.”
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Media Contact:
Stéphane Vigneault
Communications Coordinator, Green Party of Canada
cell: 613.614.4916