Ottawa

‘He was tortured… Full stop’

James Morton on Omar Khadr.

Mr. Justice Richard Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada has already determined that Omar Khadr was tortured at Guantanamo Bay. He held last year that what happened to Mr. Khadr there constituted a breach of both the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention against Torture, adding that Canada was a party to the mistreatment, albeit after the fact. His Honour wrote:

“The practice described to the Canadian [Foreign Affairs] official in March 2004 was, in my view, a breach of international human rights law respecting the treatment of detainees. … Canada became implicated in the violation when the official was provided with the redacted information and chose to proceed with the interview.”

The Canadian government did not attempt to appeal this decision.

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