AP Features, June 13th, 2007
Canada's foreign minister said Wednesday he has asked his American counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, to ensure that a 20-year-old Canadian prisoner detained at Guantanamo Bay be granted better access to his family, legal counsel and educational materials.
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said he contacted Rice last week about the case of Omar Khadr, who has been in jail since he was 15 and is accused by the U.S. government of being a terrorist.
"I asked specifically about his well-being and for a medical and psychological assessment to be done," MacKay said. "We're going to continue to provide consular access as we do in the case of all Canadians."
Khadr was accused of tossing a grenade that killed one U.S. soldier and injured another in Afghanistan in 2002.
A U.S. military judge last week dismissed the charges against Khadr on a technicality, but he has remained in custody, and the U.S. government is asking the judge to reconsider the decision.
Khadr has received little sympathy in Canada, where his family has been called the "First Family of Terrorism."
Khadr is the son of an alleged al-Qaida financier. In a documentary by Canadian Broadcasting Corp., one of Khadr's brothers, Abdurahman Khadr, acknowledged that their Egyptian-born father, Ahmed Said Khadr, and some of his brothers fought for al-Qaida and had stayed with Osama bin Laden.
One brother, Abdullah Khadr, is being held in Canada on a U.S. extradition warrant, accused of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.
The elder Khadr was killed in Pakistan in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter shelled the house where he was staying with some senior al-Qaida operatives.
