Graham has regrets over Khadr – Ex-foreign affairs minister says Liberals should have pushed to get detainee out of Guantanamo
TORONTO, ONTARIO – Canada’s former foreign affairs minister says he regrets his government did not push harder to get Omar Khadr out of Guantanamo Bay as other countries did for their citizens.
Bill Graham, who was the Liberal foreign affairs minister for the two years following Khadr’s July 2002 capture, said the political climate in the early years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and the reputation of Khadr’s family made the case unpopular in Ottawa.
But Graham says now that the Toronto-born Khadr is the sole Western detainee remaining at the U.S. prison in Cuba and there are international concerns about the legitimacy of the Bush administration’s military war crimes trials, the circumstances are different.
“Where we should have been more vigilant was to have done what the Australians and the British did and said, `We have a citizen there and we have an obligation to ensure that that citizen is getting the full international rights that person is entitled to,’” Graham said in an interview with the Star.
Graham concedes that the Liberal government’s response was not unlike that given by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government today – that Canada will not interfere as it accepts U.S. assurances Khadr is being treated and will face justice.
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