The woman made a widow by al-Qaida terrorist Omar Khadr and a soldier blinded by the grenade Khadr threw are seeking to stop the Trudeau government from paying the former Gitmo detainee $10.5 million in “compensation.”
The Liberal government is also expected to offer a formal apology to Khadr. (RELATED: Killer Of U.S. Soldier To Get Apology And $10 Million From Trudeau Government)
Tabitha Speer, widow of Sgt. Christopher Speer, and Layne Morris are expected to ask the Ontario Superior Court on Wednesday to honor a 2015 Utah civil court order that demanded Khadr pay them $134 million.
“They are trying to get an emergency injunction in a Canadian court to have their award in the United States enforced in Canada,” The Globe and Mail is reporting an unnamed source as saying. “Their desire is to have U.S. courts enforced in Canada, which would mean that any money that goes to Mr. Khadr would go to them.”
Because of the cross-border jurisdictions, it is unlikely that Khadr’s victims will ever see any of the money.
Khadr’s lawyer, Dennis Edney, told the Globe and Mail that he could make no comment on the issue because “that is the arrangement with the government.”
The former Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a hard line on Khadr, refusing to recognize him as a “child soldier” as much of the Canadian media now describes the man who pled guilty to murder.
Harper’s successor, Conservative opposition leader Andrew Scheer, has condemned the potential pay-out to Khadr. He took to Twitter on Tuesday to say, “Canadians know this is wrong. If Omar Khadr is truly sorry for what he did, he’ll give every cent to Tabitha Speer and her two children.” Scheer did not respond to requests from The Daily Caller for further comment.
The Supreme Court of Canada has denounced Khadr’s interrogation at the hands of both Canadian and American authorities as a betrayal of “the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.” Khadr alleges he was subject to sleep deprivation while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has refused to either confirm or deny the apology and payment to Khadr, obliquely referring to a “judicial process underway…is coming to its conclusion.”
An email from the Conservative Party of Canada to supporters was not so vague:
“Omar Khadr took the life of a husband and a father, and now the Liberal government wants to reward him with tens of millions of your dollars.
“Khadr is only alive today because of the medical treatment he received from U.S. forces after he killed one of their comrades.
“And now, thanks to Justin Trudeau, he will be one of the wealthiest men in Canada.”
