Thaindian News

Toronto (Canada), Aug.5 (ANI): A Toronto judge has freed the eldest son of the Khadr family from jail after four-and-a-half years of incarceration on suspect terrorism charges.

Twenty-nine-year-old Abdullah Khadr was to be extradited to the United States, where he is accused of supplying weapons to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but a Toronto judge ordered a stay on grounds that the evidence provided to him by the Americans was “manifestly unreliable”.

Khadr was arrested in Pakistan in 2004 after the CIA paid a 500, 000 dollar bounty to Islamabad’s military government, according to information revealed at his trial.

He was held in a Pakistani intelligence safehouse for 14 months without charge or access to a lawyer, where RCMP, CSIS, FBI and CIA agents interrogated him. He returned to the Khadr family home in Toronto in 2005. Mounties arrested him within weeks.

While in Pakistan, according to court transcripts, he told agents he wasn’t an al-Qaeda member, saying, “I only buy and sell weapons for al-Qaeda.”

His lawyers argued any self-incriminating statements he made in such a legally dubious situation could not be trusted.

Mr. Justice Christopher Speyer of Ontario Superior Court agreed in his ruling Wednesday, and called statements made to U.S. officials “manifestly unreliable.”

Judge Speyer described U.S. conduct in Khadr’s case as “shocking,” saying he had been mistreated.

However, he stopped short of deeming it torture.

According to lawyer Nathan Whitling, “the message to the United States is that when they’re dealing with Canadian citizens abroad, you have to respect their human rights. If you violate them, you can anticipate that you’re not going to get any help or any benefit from a Canadian court.” (ANI)