Due Diligence Required

Someone who has trained as a subversive in the society to which he was born, and who has been exposed since childhood to the ideology that the values impressed upon him are superior than the prevailing social values, and who has been schooled in violence, is not likely to decide, after a long period of incarceration for deadly violence, that he will turn his values inside out.

All the more so when his closest family members - with several exceptions - remain ardent believers in their cause, one that compels them to adopt violence to overthrow a duly constituted government in a democratic state.  Omar Khadr will be returning to Canada, and likely sooner than later.  The United States which has held him as a non-traditional prisoner of war for years wishes to be rid of him.

Formal application has been made for him to return to Canada.  While the current Government of Canada would like to forestall the inevitable, the Supreme Court of Canada invoked its juridical determination to insist that his return cannot be avoided.  Born in Canada, he is a citizen of this country.  Canada has been cursed with others whose frame of social reference has been a scourge upon society, and he is another one.

He has his defenders, because he was taught as a child that Islamist jihad is an unavoidable and honourable obligation upon those who worship Islam.  In 2010 he pleaded guilty to all five charges brought against him in the United States; the murder of Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer in Afghanistan, attempted murder, conspiracy, spying and providing material support to terrorism.

Pleading guilty, he was informed by his lawyers, would ensure that the trial would commence in his favour, taking into account his status as a 'child combatant'.  His wish was, understandably enough, to be free, to be out prison, to be reunited with his family in Toronto, and this was the way that could be accomplished. 

His time in Guantanamo Bay prison, studying the Koran alongside other mujahadeen who had been apprehended, gave him ample opportunity to renew and refresh his dedication to jihad.

That his life was saved by American medics does not appear to have altered his deadly hatred toward the United States.  He has never denounced terrorism, as one of his brothers did who was also, like him, indoctrinated into a life of conflict by their father. 

He was given the opportunity, in Afghanistan, to lay down arms, but chose to attack soldiers who were not interested in fighting his insurgent group.  He has never expressed regret for having discharged his duty as a would-be martyr.

A forensic psychiatrist who examined him believed him to remain a radical jihadist.  When he returns to Canada who, and how will he be mentored?