The Featured Writer

"As Canada once again grapples with concerns about terrorism, my experience stands as a cautionary reminder. Security laws and practices that are excessive, misguided or tainted by prejudice can have a devastating human toll."
"I was apprehended by U.S. forces during a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002 I was only 15 years old at the time, propelled into the middle of armed conflict I did not understand or want. I was detained first at the notorious U.S. airbase at Bagram, Afghanistan; and then at Guantanamo Bay for close to 10 years. I have now been held in Canadian jails for the past two years."
"From the very beginning, to this day, I have never been accorded the protection I deserve as a child soldier. And I have been through so many other human rights violations. I was held for years without being charged. I have been tortured and ill-treated. I have suffered through harsh prison conditions. And I went through an unfair trial process that sometimes felt like it would never end."
"Rather than remedy the violation, the government delayed my return from Guantanamo to Canada for a year and aggressively opposed my request not to be held in a maximum-security prison."
...the government remains determined to deny me my rights. I will not give up. I have a fundamental right to redress for what I have experienced."
"I have also seen how much of a gap there is in Canada when it comes to meaningful oversight of national security activities, to prevent violations. And I certainly appreciate the importance of there being justice and accountability when violations occur."
Omar Khadr -- Ottawa Citizen newspaper, Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Omar Khadr is shown in an Edmonton courtroom in an artist's sketch on Sept. 23, 2013, almost exactly a year after he returned to Canada from Guantanamo Bay. (Amanda McRoberts/The Canadian Press)

Thus writes a now-27-year-old, hard done by through no fault of his own, who feels entitled to believe he should be viewed with sympathy by the Canadian public and given kids-glove handling by the Government of Canada because of the support he has enjoyed from the liberal-left in Canada who are prepared to overlook any kind of threats to stability within the country in the belief that one must consider the source; people with, they feel, legitimate grievances of imperial oppression.

So much for the impression that decades of violence imposed on the West, let alone upon the helpless co-religionists living within majority Muslim nations, by fundamentalist Islamofascists who believe it is their right ordained by God above, to challenge Western democracies for primacy, imagining themselves creating an all-encompassing global caliphate of the Islamist righteous so that the world can accustom itself to living under a totalitarian theocracy.

How very timely. Just when Canada is grappling with yet another reminder that danger lurks where it might be least expected, under the very nose of the Canadian military, the Parliament buildings, a Quebec town, to wreak havoc and fear in the heart of the Canadian capital, resulting in blame and praise in equal measure, and the resolve by government to alter security and intelligence laws, up pops the aggrieved voice of a Canadian citizen whose family might well be considered Islamism Central.

The Khadr family departed Canada with sons and daughters in tow for Pakistan, leaving extended family behind in Canada to continue basking in the plenitude and liberties to enjoy freedom of speech and social entitlements to medical care and other social welfare emoluments, so that Ahmed Said Khadr, the patriarch who operated a charity out of Canada to fund fanatical Islam as practised by al-Qaeda could have his sons trained as mujahadeen.

The young men Abdurahman and Abdullah, brothers of Omar Khadr were trained as jihadists, as was Omar Khadr as well, along with training in the use of explosives. He was wounded in a violent gun battle with American soldiers in Afghanistan, during which he was accused of having thrown an explosive that killed an American medic. Other American medics saved Omar Khadr's life. He was taken to Guantanamo Bay prison where he lived for years until standing trial to be found guilty of

When Omar Khadr's mother Maha Elsamnah and his sister returned to Canada to resume their residence as Canadian citizens, they spoke with contemptful scorn of Canadian values which they derided, and upheld the fundamentalist Islamist values that had them dressed in all-concealing black burqas. Omrar Khader's two older brothers faced terrorism charges and extradition threats.

And he speaks feelingly of security and threats and the need to address them, but above all, not to over-address them as was done in his case, a poor young boy placed willy-nilly in the line of action that perplexed and concerned him. As though fifteen-year-old Islamists are a figment of the feverish imagination of Westerners, and they pose no threat whatever to the established order and values of democratic societies in their choice to become absorbed into Islamism's universal jihad.

Subterfuge, and double-speaking in establishing credentials as an adoptee of the social and cultural values of democracy to cloak an underlying seething rage propelled by a religious ideology of fanaticism in whose favour stealth is employed as a means to throw those targeted off guard, enabling the infiltrator to produce a result favourable to the greater concern of Sharia and conquest. And in the end, with public sympathy, demand recompense for his travails.

It would be most unfortunate if readers of Mr. Khadr's sanctimonious little piece of bafflegab tended to believe that he has become a talented PR agent for jihad. Canada's lenient, left-leaning courts have given him leave to expand his $20-million lawsuit against the federal government for treating him so badly, poor waif.