24-year-old convicted war criminal due to return to Canada this fall
Months before he is due to be repatriated from Guantanamo Bay, Omar Khadr has fired his lawyers, Dennis Edney and Nate Whitling, the Canadian Press reports. The pair have represented Khadr for several years, and have repeatedly called for Canada to repatriate the Canadian-born convicted war criminal and successfully argued before the Supreme Court that Ottawa had violated Khadr’s rights. Toronto lawyers John Norris and Brydie Bethell will now represent him. “I have no idea what pressures are being placed on Omar Khadr in Guantanamo to make that decision,” Edney told the Canadian Press. Edney had previously expressed suspicions that Khadr’s Pentagon-appointed attorney Lt.-Col. Jon Jackson had pressured his client to give his Canadian lawyers the boot. Lt.-Col. Jackson has yet to comment. Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 after an American soldier was killed by a grenade he allegedly threw, and was transferred to Guantanamo, where he has remained since.