OTTAWA — The Federal Court of Canada has given the government seven days to come up with a list of remedies to its breach of Omar Khadr’s constitutional rights.
In a decision released today, the court said the Canadian citizen now jailed at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is entitled to “procedural fairness and natural justice.”
Justice Russel Zinn says Ottawa did not meet the standard set by the Supreme Court of Canada when it ordered the federal government to right the wrongs it had brought on the 23-year-old accused of killing a U.S. medic in 2002.
In a January ruling, the top court had declared Khadr’s rights had been violated and it demanded the Harper government come up with a remedy.
Khadr’s lawyers had requested a judicial review of the government’s response.
Khadr’s lawyer Nathan Whitling says today’s ruling means the government has “once again been called upon by the courts to do the right thing.”
Whitling said he hopes Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon “take advantage of this opportunity” and to finally request the repatriation of Omar Khadr.
The government refuses to repatriate Khadr and has only asked Washington not to use information Canadian officials gleaned from him while imprisoned at the Caribbean island facility.
Zinn says that’s not good enough.