Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
You're obviously right under the present law.
However, being a Canadian citizen should be more than just holding a piece of paper. If you have long absensses from Canada and join a military force that the government of Canada is at war with, that should be reason to strip you of citizenship. Obviously the issue of "treason" is open to abuse, but this case is pretty clear cut.
All that being said, Omar was a child when all of this went down, so it's not necessarily his fault. I'd be all for letting him out of prison and throwing his mother in.
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That's where it gets fuzzy though. According to the US, he was an "enemy combatant" which was a convenient way of denying him rights that he would normally have been given for being a actual soldier, not to mention a child soldier, and a Canadian citizen. To call him a soldier in order to try him for treason goes against the US's argument this whole time.
While I think the guy is scum, the troubling part is that he was never given a proper trial, and I just can't imagine that a military trial at Guantanamo Bay would be fair or impartial in any way. Obviously, some call that being a "bleeding heart", but I just don't like the precedent it sets when a Canadian citizen is imprisoned and not given access to legal rights that the rest of us would expect for ourselves.
I have little doubt that he and his family are pieces of excrement, but then why not prove it in an actual court of law instead of a military tribunal behind closed doors? One of the pillars of a democracy is that everyone gets their day in court, and to start picking and choosing who gets a fair trial starts to chip away at it.