Omar Khadr sues for $60 million
Lawyers accuse Canadian government of a ‘conspiracy’ with U.S. to keep Khadr behind barsby Michael Friscolanti on Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Omar Khadr is still behind bars, 11 long years and counting after he was shot and captured by U.S. troops in war-torn Afghanistan. But his next fight—a battle with Ottawa over financial compensation—is just ramping up.
Khadr’s lawyers, due in Federal Court later this month, are asking a judge to approve yet another round of amendments to a lawsuit that’s been inching its way through the system for almost as long as he’s been locked away. Originally filed in 2004 as a mere $100,000 claim (and later bumped up to $10 million), Khadr’s latest submission says he now deserves $60 million from the Canadian government: $20 million for breaching his Charter rights, $20 million in punitive damages, and $20 million for failing to treat him like the 15-year-old child soldier he was. [Bratnote: Christopher Speer is unavailable for comment]
The dollar figures, of course, are completely arbitrary. If Khadr ultimately wins his case against the feds, a judge will decide the value of his award, regardless of whether he asked for $1 or $1 billion. In fact, one of Khadr’s lawyers says the $60-million tally listed in the lawsuit isn’t quite accurate, even though the document says so. “We perceive the claim as being a $20-million claim,” says John Kingman Phillips, who plans to correct the record when he appears in a Toronto courtroom Dec. 18. “That’s what it’s intended to be.”...
There is more here.
If you need a sense of what I really think about Omar Khadr, just put his name in the search bar above. Other than that, I'll repeat what I say so often: PAY ATTENTION!
No comments:
Post a Comment