Wed, May 14 01:15 PM
A top Canadian law maker has equated the United States and Canada with Al-Qaida for their alleged mishandling of the case involving a young Canadian detained at Guantanamo Bay.
"Canada and the United States have sunk to the moral equivalent of terrorists in their handling of a young Canadian held at Guantanamo Bay," Liberal senator and ex-general Romeo Dallaire told a House of Commons Committee on Tuesday.
Dallaire said the two countries have flouted human rights and international conventions in dealing with Omar Khadr and are no better than those who don't believe in rights at all.
He submitted before the committee that Khadr is a victim - a child soldier who should be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society and not tried before what he called an 'illegal court'.
"Canada should be bending over backward to bring him home," Canadian Press reported quoting Dallaire, a former special UN ambassador for children.
Khadr was 15 when he was captured after a fire fight in Afghanistan and has been held in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for six years. American authorities now are attempting to try him before a special tribunal.
Dallaire, whose troubling experiences during the 1994 Rwanda genocide helped make him an outspoken advocate of human rights, said the Khadr case points out a moral equivalence among Canada, the United States and al-Qaida.
The US is ignoring its own laws in prosecuting Khadr and Canada is betraying itself by not fighting for Khadr's return home, he said.
Dallaire said the Americans were acting out of panic after 9/11 and Canada was playing politics and that left them no better than the terrorists.
"The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties, in order to say that you're doing it to protect yourself and you are going against those rights and conventions, you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all," he said.
"We are slipping down the slope of going down that same route."
Conservative MP Jason Kenney asked if Dallaire really believes that. He pointed to a number of Al-Qaida outrages, including an incident in which the terror group reportedly fitted mentally challenged young girl with explosive belts and sent them to their death in a Baghdad animal market.
"Is it your testimony that al-Qaida strapping up a 14-year-old girl with Down syndrome and sending her into a pet market to be remotely detonated is the moral equivalent to Canada's not making extraordinary political efforts for a transfer of Omar Khadr to this country?" he asked.
Dallaire was adamant. "If you want a black and white, and I'm only too prepared to give it to you, absolutely," he replied. "You're either with the law or not with the law.
You're either guilty or you're not." He added, though, that Kenney was using 'extreme scenarios'.
In an effort to connect the Kashmir valley with the rest of the Railways network, a train might soon run through a 100 km long stretch in the Kashmir valley.
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