The Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC") handed down its decision in Canada (Prime Minister) v Khadr, 2010 SCC 3, on Friday, which may have prompted a call to Omar Khadr from his lawyers telling him, "So close, and yet so far..." TheCourt.ca covered Khadr's case back in September 2009, before it was argued at the SCC (see my […]
NY Trials 9/11 for Plotters Still A "State-Always-Wins" System U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants will be tried before civilian courts in New York, the city that The Christian Science Monitor calls the "terror trial capital of the US." Salon's Glenn Greenwald would no doubt disagree […]
TheCourt.ca is pleased to present this piece from John H. Currie, Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, commenting on Canada (Justice) v Khadr. Our past discussion on the 2008 Khadr decision can be found here. On May 23, 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada released a judgment (Canada (Justice) v Khadr, [2008] […]
As my colleague James Gotowiec rightly points out, the reasoning of the trial judge in Prime Minister et al v. Omar Khadr, 2009 FC 405, upheld by the majority of the Federal Court of Appeal, is weak and unconvincing. The ratio of the trial judgment can be described as follows: although Khadr is in US […]
It appears Canadian citizenship isn't worth as much as we might like to think. The sagas of Abousfian Abdelrazik, Suaad Haji Mohamud, and Omar Khadr demonstrate that, if the government thinks you're a terrorist, you'll need to get most of the Canadian public onside before the Department of Foreign Affairs will consider helping you. While […]
The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star have recently commented on reports that Governor General Michaëlle Jean advised the Prime Minister to repatriate Omar Khadr. The original story appeared in La Presse on September 26, 2008. It must be emphasized that the veracity of these reports remains to be seen. However, if true, they raise […]
Yesterday marked another significant delay in the trial of Omar Khadr before a U.S. Military Commission. Despite this, it is virtually certain that our Prime Minister will continue to refuse to take any action to help secure Khadr's release. Why is that? The answer, as one might expect during a federal election, is pure and […]
Justice Rosalie Abella and Justice Marshall Rothstein are often depicted as the opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum on the Supreme Court of Canada. Justice Abella is considered by many to be the most liberal member of the current Supreme Court (of course, whether this is good or bad depends largely on your own personal […]
Omar Khadr has fought and is fighting many battles, and one such has been in his country - suing Canada for interview records that the Canadian authorities conducted with him in Guantanamo Bay and handed to the U.S. authorities. The Supreme Court of Canada - allowing great reservations to those ever-so-illusive national security concerns - […]
The President of the Canadian Bar Association, together with bar leaders around the world, has called on U.S. President George W. Bush to immediately close the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “Few governmental operations by democratic countries have shown such a profound disrespect for the rule of law,” says CBA President Bernard Amyot […]