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What’s behind Obama’s curious timing of Gitmo jihadist Omar Khadr’s release
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By Michelle Malkin • October 1, 2012 09:25 AM
This is a murderous Islamic soldier, not a “child”
If I read one more description of Gitmo jihadist Omar Khadr as a former “child soldier,” I will throw up. As some of you may have read over the weekend, the 26-year-old Muslim killer who pleaded guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty to five charges related to the battlefield killing of U.S. soldier Christopher Speer was released from Gitmo by the White House on Saturday and sent back to Canada.
Khadr was captured during a 2002 bloody firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound near Khost, Afghanistan.
Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald/McClatchy broke the story this weekend of his repatriation:
Khadr departed the base in Cuba before dawn Saturday, a secret transfer 10 days after a Canadian diplomat paid Khadr a visit on his 26th birthday. He landed at a Royal Canadian airbase in Ontario and was transferred to the Millhaven maximum security prison for what his lawyer described as an assessment of the most suitable place to serve out his sentence.
The case of Khadr — Guantánamo’s last Western captive — stirred debate in international law and human rights circles.
Because he was captured at such a young age, some called him a child soldier who was dropped off in the war zone by his father and deserving of rehabilitation not interrogation. Others called him the respected scion of an al Qaida family, nicknamed Canada’s First Family of Terror in news reports, and opposed his repatriation.
Psychiatrist Michael Welner, testifying at the Guantánamo war court for the prosecution and paid by the Pentagon, called Khadr a continuing danger who spent his time at the U.S. prison camps in Cuba “marinating in a community of hardened and belligerent radical Islamists.”
Share
By Michelle Malkin • October 1, 2012 09:25 AM
This is a murderous Islamic soldier, not a “child”
If I read one more description of Gitmo jihadist Omar Khadr as a former “child soldier,” I will throw up. As some of you may have read over the weekend, the 26-year-old Muslim killer who pleaded guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty to five charges related to the battlefield killing of U.S. soldier Christopher Speer was released from Gitmo by the White House on Saturday and sent back to Canada.
Khadr was captured during a 2002 bloody firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound near Khost, Afghanistan.
Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald/McClatchy broke the story this weekend of his repatriation:
Khadr departed the base in Cuba before dawn Saturday, a secret transfer 10 days after a Canadian diplomat paid Khadr a visit on his 26th birthday. He landed at a Royal Canadian airbase in Ontario and was transferred to the Millhaven maximum security prison for what his lawyer described as an assessment of the most suitable place to serve out his sentence.
The case of Khadr — Guantánamo’s last Western captive — stirred debate in international law and human rights circles.
Because he was captured at such a young age, some called him a child soldier who was dropped off in the war zone by his father and deserving of rehabilitation not interrogation. Others called him the respected scion of an al Qaida family, nicknamed Canada’s First Family of Terror in news reports, and opposed his repatriation.
Psychiatrist Michael Welner, testifying at the Guantánamo war court for the prosecution and paid by the Pentagon, called Khadr a continuing danger who spent his time at the U.S. prison camps in Cuba “marinating in a community of hardened and belligerent radical Islamists.”
