Liberal senator and ex-general Romeo Dallaire says the government is undermining efforts to eradicate the use of child soldiers, by refusing to bring Omar Khadr into the Canadian justice system.
Khadr, accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old, is being held in Guantanamo Bay. Footage has been released of Khadr, at the age of 16, being questioned by a CSIS agent as he sobs and asks for his mother.
Dallaire said Khadr is a child soldier and should be given the same rehabilitation and treatment that Canada has devoted to other child soldiers around the world.
"We're getting stabbed in the back," Dallaire told CTV Newsnet on Wednesday. "We have worked for years to assist other nations in eradicating the use of children in conflict. But our own country doesn't even want to recognize that our own citizen (is a child soldier). No matter what his politics are, it's totally irrelevant. He's a child soldier that was abused and he's a child soldier that needs to be brought back into a formal process we signed up for."
Canada has signed on to UN Security Council resolution SCR 1612, which calls for the monitoring of countries that use child soldiers. It's estimated more than 250,000 child soldiers are used around the world, many of them in African countries like Sudan, the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The resolution also urges countries like Canada to support programs aimed at rehabilitating child soldiers.
The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a UN document signed in 2002, makes the use of child soldiers illegal under international law. A child soldier is defined as anyone under the age of 18 who directly or indirectly takes part in a military or political armed conflict.
Dallaire said the interrogation video released Tuesday shows a "traumatized 16-year-old" who is being held in an "illegal jail," and is an argument why Canada should use its own justice system to try Khadr.
"It is all the reason why we have fought for establishing the optional protocol on child rights, so that children are not used in combat operations," said Dallaire.
He added there was a "disconnect between what we believe are human rights, the rights of children and our judicial system, and this position taken by the prime minister in regards to a process that is considered by the American supreme court as inappropriate."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson have not publicly commented on Khadr's detainment since the interrogation video was released Tuesday.
However, Harper said last week that Khadr should be tried in Guantanamo Bay.
"Mr. Khadr is accused of very serious things," he said. "There is a legal process in the United States. He can make his arguments in that process."
Khadr is accused of throwing a grenade during a 2002 firefight that killed U.S. Sgt. Chris Speer. Another soldier involved in the skirmish, Sgt. Layne Morris, said Khadr deserves no sympathy.
"(Khadr) is disappointed and discouraged that he's alive and he's in the hands of coalition forces instead of in paradise with 72 virgins," Morris told The Canadian Press, when told of footage showing Khadr weeping.
He also said Khadr should be tried in Guantanamo Bay because he "committed adult crimes" against U.S. citizens.
Morris has alleged that Khadr waited until troops were nearby before throwing a grenade, in order to kill as many people as possible.
None of the charges against Khadr have been proven in court.
With files from The Canadian Press
