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LETTER: Omar Khadr settlement is outrageous

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals did an unbelievable thing: they knowingly awarded a convicted terrorist $10.5 million of your tax dollars. Omar Khadr confessed and pled guilty to throwing the grenade in Afghanistan that killed U.S.
LTE Hoback

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals did an unbelievable thing: they knowingly awarded a convicted terrorist $10.5 million of your tax dollars.

Omar Khadr confessed and pled guilty to throwing the grenade in Afghanistan that killed U.S. army medic Christopher Speer, and injured U.S. Special Forces soldier Layne Morris. However, because Khadr had been a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay and allegedly suffered mistreatment there at the hands of Americans, many on the Canadian left feel that he should be blameless for his crime and be awarded for his “hardship”.

While Khadr may have experienced mistreatment in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay (from 2002-05 during the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments), it is a fact that he fought against Canada and our allies in Afghanistan, that he admitted to working with a terrorist organization that killed 24 Canadians on September 11th, that he purposely killed an allied soldier with a wife and two children, and that he is alive today because of the medical treatment he received from U.S. forces after that battle.

And the Trudeau Liberals will now pay him over $10 million. Ralph Goodale, Justin Trudeau and the rest of government will make excuses about having no choice; that they had to make a payment. This is patently false. This was a political decision by a Liberal government that is soft on crime and sympathetic to terrorists, pure and simple.

When the Supreme Court ruled on Omar Khadr in 2010, there was no mention of a monetary award; the Court simply ruled that his rights had been violated while he was a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay and that Canada had to make this right.  At the time, Khadr was asking for repatriation to serve the rest of his prison sentence in Canada, which was granted.

But now the Liberals (without being mandated to by a court and completely of their own volition) have paid Khadr millions of dollars. What makes it even worse is that it was done in secret on Wednesday evening, so that an injunction against the payment made by Tabitha Speer (Christopher Speer’s widow) and Layne Morris would fail. The blatant underhandedness of this Liberal government’s actions is nothing but an insult to the Speer and Morris families.

Conservatives believe that it is one thing to acknowledge mistreatment, which Khadr may well have endured, but it is quite another to award a convicted terrorist that murdered a soldier who had a wife and children. When a Canadian soldier is killed or injured in battle, the government provides a lump sum payment up to a maximum of $360,000.  Why then are Justin Trudeau and Ralph Goodale willing to provide $10.5 million to a convicted terrorist?

Canadians know this is wrong and our thoughts continue to be with Tabitha Speer and her children who are forced to grow up without a father because of Khadr’s actions. Given his admission of guilt, our Conservative Opposition is calling on Khadr to give his “award” money to Christopher Speer’s widow and two children and Layne Morris.  The fact that he has this money at all is an insult to every Canadian man and woman who has served in uniform to defend Canada.

Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government should be ashamed of their outrageous decision.