page_title: Canadian response to Omar Khadr
section_title: Later developments
hierarchical_section_title: Canadian response to Omar Khadr / Later developments
caption_attribution_description: From left, Navy Lt. Cmdr William Kuebler, a judge advocate general, or JAG officer and Rebecca Snyder, his civilian co-counsel are the Pentagon appointed defense attorneys for Omar Khadr.
context_page_description: A Canadian captured by American forces in Afghanistan at the age of 15, Omar Khadr is currently on interim release from prison in Canada pending an appeal of his war-crimes conviction before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay.
  Formerly the only Western citizen remaining in Guantanamo, Khadr is unique in that Canada refused to seek extradition or repatriation despite the urgings of Amnesty International, the Canadian Bar Association and other prominent organisations. His lawyer Dennis Edney has summarised the differential response towards Khadr stating that "one of the problems" with defending the youth is that he's a member of the Khadr family rather than "a Smith or an Arar"
  For several years following Khadr's capture in 2002, his case did not generate any "serious controversy". Once his military tribunals began however, his case drew considerable attention as a child soldier, with commentators seizing on the fact he is the youngest prisoner held in extrajudicial detention by the United States to face charges in the War on Terror. By 2007, interest in his case had grown exponentially although Canadians remained divided on whether he should be repatriated.
context_section_description: Polls show respondents divided on Khadr's case, with nearly equal numbers believing he should be left in Guantanamo for the Americans to process, or that he should be repatriated to Canada. As of July 2010, 42% of those polled believed that Khadr faced an unfair trial at Guantanamo, although only 36% believed that meant he should be repatriated to Canada instead. 
  In April 2008, the House of Commons of Canada Sub-committee on International Human Rights convened the country's first hearing on whether the House should request repatriation of Khadr to Canada; though, only the Governor General in Council has the authority to make such a request. Witnesses included Senator Romeo Dallaire, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, defence lawyers William C. Kuebler and Rebecca Snyder, and the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights Louise Arbour. At the hearings, Dallaire stated he was "going to be a pain" and "harass" the Conservative government until they intervened in the case.
  In June 2008, the CBC sent Khadr six written questions and requested a response, which it subsequently published. Also in June, the Canadian government formally discussed the possibility of repatriating Khadr. It was suggested that Toronto Imam Hamid Slimi could draft a "religious rehabilitation" program in preparation for Khadr's return.
  Two months later, his family launched TheKhadrLegacy.com in a bid to quell rumors about Khadr being foreign-born, a "citizen of convenience", or raised in a family of terrorists. Their attempts to speak on Omar's behalf were condemned by both his military and civil lawyers.
  On 16 October 2008, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a 43-minute documentary "The U.S. vs Omar Khadr", produced by Nazim Baksh and Terence McKenna.
  In October 2008, his older sister Zaynab Khadr began a hunger strike on Parliament Hill where she hoped to draw attention to the government's inaction on bringing her brother back to face trial in Canada. The following year, it was determined that Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon had misrepresented the case when he claimed that Khadr had built bombs to kill Canadian soldiers, since Canadian soldiers had not been operating in the area.
  The week before Khadr's tribunal was scheduled to begin, 64% of Canadians polled stated that they believed Khadr should be repatriated to Canada if Guantanamo were closed; a marked increase since earlier polls. However, later opinion polls in September 2009 indicated that 52% of respondents felt no sympathy for Khadr's plight (a 7% increase since January 2009) compared with 38% that do.
  In April 2010, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops criticised the country for failing to uphold the law and repatriate Khadr, noting that "ideological indoctrination" seemed to have distorted public feelings about the case.
  On February 25, 2013, Natalie Brender published an article criticizing a new immigration bill from Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney.
  The bill contained provisions for stripping Canadian citizenship from individuals who fought against Canadian Forces or engaged in terrorism.  Brender suggested the bill was triggered by the Harper government's  anger with Khadr, "whose current non-deportability (as a Canadian citizen) is seen by some Conservatives as an affront to the gravity of his actions in attacking coalition forces in Afghanistan."
caption: Kuebler and Snyder
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