Juno News - Omar Khadr walks free as a multi-millionaire

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.

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.

00:00:18.080 He has no bail restrictions.

00:00:19.840 He has no restrictions on travel.

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,

00:00:40.620 counts towards him serving out his sentence.

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

00:01:45.200 about who Omar Khadr is.

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

00:02:17.240 decided that he had served enough.

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

00:03:46.300 is the one who should actually shut up.

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.

00:04:30.840 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutt.

00:04:32.380 tidisiang Kaiina 0.82

00:04:34.020 derivative to Chiang Kaiina

00:04:34.380 So far

00:04:36.320 As you know, I'm going to start here for morewen

Juno News - March 26, 2019

Omar Khadr walks free as a multi-millionaire

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