Khadr interview would require prison lockdown, Corrections Canada says
Corrections Canada says media interview would require unprecedented security precautions, despite Omar Khadr being described as model prisoner.
Corrections Canada claims an interview with Omar Khadr
would require unprecedented security precautions, including a prison
lockdown, despite the fact that the 28-year-old often receives visitors
and has been described as a model prisoner.
An outline of the proposed security measures, contained in a court
affidavit filed by the Bowden Institution, were made only after the
Toronto Star, CBC and White Pine Pictures asked a federal court to intervene,
arguing the government was violating the constitutional guarantee of a
free press and the public’s “right to know” in blocking access to Khadr.
“Omar has seen a reduction of his security level from maximum to
medium in the last year, and yet the government is suggesting it will
require extraordinary security measures to allow him to speak to the
media? No other prisoner would be gagged in this way,” said lawyer
Patric Senson, who is representing the Star and other parties.
Howard Sapers, the Correctional Investigator for Canada, said he
could not comment specifically on Khadr’s case, but said he was
surprised by the response of the medium-security facility where Khadr is
being held.
“I have never heard of a case where a federally sentenced offender
has been denied outside contact other than having to lock down an entire
institution,” Sapers said in an interview Thursday.
“I am getting an increasing number of inquiries from media outlets
asking for assistance or advice in regard to pursuing interviews with
Correctional Service staff or inmates,” he said. “The impression I’m
left with is that it is increasingly difficult for journalists to cover
Corrections news.”
Handout Photo Omar Khadr, 28, shown at the Bowden Institution
Repeated requests over the last two years to interview
Khadr have been denied by government officials citing a section of a
policy known as the “commissioner’s directive.”
Internal emails obtained by The Canadian Press
show one interview request, made soon after Khadr arrived in Canada in
2012 and was incarcerated at the Millhaven Institution, was approved by
the warden, only to be overturned 90 minutes later by the office of the
public safety minister.
Meanwhile, Khadr has been visited by teachers, lawyers, students,
relatives and other members of the public who have become involved in
his case during his incarceration in Ontario and Alberta.
Federal inmates are permitted to give interviews unless a warden
finds that the risk is too great to staff and inmates, or to the
operations of the facility — a decision that should be independent, free
from political interference, said Sapers.
Sapers also said facilities conduct “risk assessments,” before having
to take the rare step of locking down an institution — if one was
conducted at Alberta’s Bowden Institution assessing the impact of an
interview, it was not included in the government’s federal court filing.
The faces of Omar Khadr through the years
According to the affidavit filed by John McKill, Bowden’s acting
assistant warden of management services, an on-camera interview with
Khadr would take place in the administrative building, forcing other
inmates “to be confined to their residential living units while the
set-up for the interview and the interview itself took place.”
McKill’s affidavit also notes that the building, which lacks
“internal barriers,” is used throughout the day for a variety of
purposes, including “work, participation in educational upgrading
classes, and correctional programs, visits, parole board hearings and
telephone calls with counsel and legal advisers.”
Senson, along with Toronto lawyer John Phillips, will argue that
McKill’s affidavit should not be considered by the federal judge
reviewing the media’s claim since it was not provided until legal action
was taken.
“The government was clearly trying to justify political decisions
after the fact when it provided the court with its reasons for denying
this interview with Omar,” Senson said in an interview Thursday.
No date has been set for the federal court judicial review, which
received widespread support from civil rights groups and other media
organizations when filed this summer.
“The government has repeatedly expressed its views on Mr. Khadr’s
case and it is only fair play in a democracy that other voices —
including Mr. Khadr’s himself — have equal air time,” wrote the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
A New York Times editorial
stated: “The Canadian government should allow the interview and let Mr.
Khadr, now an adult, share his perspective on his ordeal. The public
has been kept waiting long enough.”
Khadr has been in custody since the age of 15, after he was shot and
captured following a firefight with U.S. and Afghan forces in
Afghanistan.
In 2010, he pleaded guilty to five war crimes, including murder for
the death of Delta Force soldier Christopher Speer, who was fatally
wounded in the 2002 firefight.
He was transferred to Canada in 2012 to serve the remainder of an
eight-year sentence as a condition of his plea deal. He has since said
he accepted the deal only to be released from Guantanamo and has no
memory of the firefight.
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