Omar Khadr - New multi-millionaire of Canada

Recently there is a row in Canada for Omar Khadr and why is he being paid 10 MM by Canadian government.

I am writing this post to provide my readers some facts and information about who is Omar Khadr. I neither support nor is against about him getting paid by Canadian government.

This post is just to provide brief information in nut shell about Omar Khadr.

Omar Ahmed Sayid Khadr 

(born September 19, 1986) is a Canadian citizen who was detained at Guantanamo Bay as a minor and held there for 10 years, during which he pleaded guilty to murder and war crimes.

Born in Canada, Khadr was brought to Afghanistan by his father, who was affiliated with an extreme religious group. On July 27, 2002, at age 15, Khadr was severely wounded in a firefight during the United States invasion of Afghanistan, in the village of Ayub Kheyl, in which several Taliban fighters were killed. After being detained at Bagram, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He was alleged to have thrown a grenade during the firefight that resulted in the death of an American soldier. During his detention, he was interrogated by Canadian as well as US intelligence officers.

Khadr pleaded guilty to murder and several war crimes in October 2010 at a hearing by a United States military commission.He was the youngest prisoner and last Western citizen to be held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay. He accepted an eight-year sentence, not including time served, with the possibility of a transfer to Canada after at least one year to serve the remainder of the sentence. Khadr was the first person since World War II to be prosecuted in a military commission for war crimes committed while still a minor. His conviction and sentence were widely denounced by civil rights groups and various newspaper editorials.His prosecution and imprisonment was condemned by the United Nations, which has taken up the issue of child soldiers (despite Khadr not being a child soldier by the UN's own definition). The Supreme Court of Canada found that the Canadian government's interrogation of Khadr at Guantanamo Bay "offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects".

On September 29, 2012, Khadr was repatriated to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canadian custody. He was initially assigned to a maximum-security prison but moved to a medium-security prison in 2014. Khadr was released on bail in May 2015 (pending an appeal of his U.S. conviction) after the Alberta Court of Appeal refused to block his release as had been requested by the Canadian government.

In 2013, Khadr filed a C$20 million civil suit against the government of Canada for conspiring with the U.S. in abusing his rights. He said he had signed the plea agreement because he believed it was the only way he could gain transfer from Guantanamo, and claimed that he had no memory of the firefight in which he was wounded. Khadr's lawyers successfully challenged his incarceration in Canada as an adult offender. On May 14, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the federal government's position, ruling that Khadr had clearly been sentenced by the U.S. military tribunal as a minor. If he lost his appeal of the US conviction, underway in a separate action, he would serve any remaining time in a provincial facility rather than in a federal penitentiary.

On July 4, 2017, an unnamed government source said that the Canadian government would apologize and pay C$10.5 million in compensation to Khadr. In a related action, the American widow of the soldier he is alleged to have killed in action has filed an application to enforce a US$134 million Utah judgment in Canada.

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