Omar Khadr walks free as a multi-millionaire
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
160.62521
Summary
Less than four years after being released from prison into freedom, Omar Khadr has been declared free to walk the streets of Canada. He has no bail restrictions, no restrictions on travel, and no contact with his terrorist supporting sister. He is just a normal, average, run-of-the-mill, everyday Canadian in the eyes of the law.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Less than four years after he was released from prison into freedom, essentially in Alberta,
00:00:12.120
Omar Khadr has been declared by a court in Alberta to essentially be completely free.
00:00:21.540
He has no restrictions on contact with his terrorist supporting sister.
00:00:26.220
Omar Khadr is just a normal, average, run-of-the-mill, everyday Canadian in the eyes of the law,
00:00:32.680
after a judge determined that Khadr's time in conditional release, almost four years since May 2015,
00:00:43.640
Now, this is the sentence, of course, that stems back to a military conviction in the United States
00:00:49.260
in which Khadr was found guilty after pleading guilty to committing murder in the battlefield
00:00:55.260
while serving with a terror cell, with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
00:00:59.760
This is the grenade-throwing incident to which Khadr has already confessed
00:01:03.660
where he threw the grenade that killed Sergeant Christopher Speer and injured Lane Morris.
00:01:08.680
Now, this incident has actually led to a huge judgment to the tune of over $140 million in Utah
00:01:16.400
that basically says Khadr owes the impacted families of the crime to which he confessed some form of restitution.
00:01:24.300
Now, there's still some efforts to try to get that judgment enforced in Canada.
00:01:28.300
We know that there was a report a few weeks ago indicating that Khadr had put a little bit of his $10.5 million windfall
00:01:34.440
from the federal government into an investment property, a weird strip mall in Edmonton.
00:01:40.240
But suffice it to say, there are still a lot of questions that Canadians are waiting for answers to
00:01:47.020
And he's entitled to appeal his U.S. military court conviction.
00:01:50.160
His legal team has said that's exactly what it's doing.
00:01:52.800
But that does not take away the right of Canadians to be uncomfortable by this man experiencing freedom
00:01:58.620
when, quite frankly, the Speer family has had no reprieve from Christopher Speer's passing in Afghanistan just 15 years ago.
00:02:06.340
I want to read a comment to you from one of Khadr's supporters in a CBC story about this latest evolution
00:02:12.440
where a judge who incidentally was appointed under this liberal government to her post
00:02:19.640
Janice Williamson, a self-described supporter of Omar Khadr, said the following to CBC.
00:02:24.640
I think he wants to live an ordinary Canadian life and I think this will allow him to do so.
00:02:30.940
I hope it's a signal to his detractors that the rule of law and the justice system supports him in embarking on that ordinary life.
00:02:39.300
When Andrew Scheer said that Omar Khadr should turn over some of the money he got from the federal government
00:02:43.920
to the Speer family, Williamson said it was a dog whistle.
00:02:48.040
She said it's Andrew Scheer, quote, alerting people who think that somehow Omar Khadr was unfairly compensated
00:02:54.420
or that somehow think Canadian citizens are hard done by because the justice system is treating him with the rule of law.
00:03:01.880
You see, one of the issues that I have with a lot of the reaction to the Omar Khadr story
00:03:06.180
is that there's an entirely defensible claim that this whole situation has been tragic and unfortunate
00:03:11.700
and Khadr was a child and maybe there were some issues there but ultimately justice should be served.
00:03:17.940
And the problem is that most of his supporters have not come in that measured, nuanced way
00:03:23.140
but they've been downright cheerleaders from a lot of the mainstream media reporters that have been covering his case
00:03:28.220
to this woman, Williamson, people that don't just think what happened was tragic.
00:03:32.780
They deny it ever happened. They deny Khadr's own confession.
00:03:36.400
They deny the video of him actually assembling bombs as a young boy.
00:03:41.700
And they do this, well, simultaneously claiming that anyone who has an issue with it
00:03:48.660
And this is one of the most tragic elements of this case
00:03:51.180
that no one has any respect or time for the argument that has been proven
00:03:56.460
that families have been impacted by Khadr's actions.
00:03:59.340
He was there as a young man, yes, but a man nonetheless.
00:04:03.700
He had independence, he had a role to play, and that role contributed directly and indirectly to the loss of life.
00:04:10.280
No one should be celebrating that he's now walking free, as though it never happened.
00:04:16.360
Free to go to the country where this all took place if he wants.
00:04:19.960
Free to communicate with the family who radicalized him, which he has fought to do.
00:04:24.840
Free to do anything, except for feel a bit of regret, because that is apparently outside of his grasp.
00:04:36.320
As you know, I'm going to start here for morewen