Tories renew effort to kill gun registry
OTTAWA — The Conservatives are launching a publicity blitz to help kill the federal gun registry.
The Tories are targetting specific ridings, aimed at twisting the arm of key MPs who might give them the votes they need to eliminate the registry.
They are buying radio ads in largely rural areas, urging listeners to flood their MPs with calls and e-mails to vote for a Conservtive MP’s bill next week.
The ads stress the importance of protecting the rural way of life.
With the gun registry up for a free vote, the Tories need only a handful of MPs to switch sides in order for the private member’s bill to pass.
Opponents of the registry complain that it unfairly hassles honest hunters and owners of long guns, while doing nothing to stop criminals.
Its supporters — including prominent police groups — call it a valuable database for law enforcement and question why people should be forced to register their dogs, but not their lethal weapons.
Feds spent $1.3 million to fight Khadr
TORONTO — The Toronto Star reports the federal government has spent more than $1.3 million in its seven-year legal battle against Toronto-born terror suspect Omar Khadr.
The newspaper says the costs of the government’s appeals are contained in a written response released this week to a question posed by the New Democratic Party in the House of Commons in June.
Khadr, who is being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, was captured after a firefight with U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2002 in which U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer died in grenade blast.
Police arrest son of imam killed
TORONTO — The son of an imam killed in a shootout with the FBI in Detroit was apprehended in neighbouring Windsor, Ont., Thursday while two other Canadian residents were still being sought amid allegations they were involved with a radical Islamic group.
Mujahid Carswell, the eldest son of Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was taken into custody at a residence without incident, city police confirmed.
Carswell — also known as Mujahid Abdullah — was turned over to the Canada Border Services Agency which said Thursday evening that he had been voluntarily turned over to FBI custody.
“We arrested him,” said Jerome Brannagan, deputy chief of the Windsor police service. “He was brought into immigration custody.”
Abdullah, imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, died Wednesday as police sought to arrest him at a warehouse in Dearborn, Mich.
