Here’s an interesting question; should a child fighter be put on trial as an enemy combatant even though they were doing so to save their own life?
Per the Geneva Convention a child fighter should be treated as “victims” not as “combatants” as some are dragged into conflict by a parent or family member – PB/TK
Canada Apologizes for Not Aiding Its Captive Citizen – By Dan Lindorff / July 12 2017
The story of Omar Khadr has always been one of the ugliest chapters of the ugly story of the US War on Terror initiated with the Congressional passage of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and the ensuing invasion of Afghanistan.
Yesterday, Khadr finally won a measure of justice when the Canadian government apologized to him for its failure to defend him against his US captors and to seek his release from confinement at the US prison compound at Guantanamo Bay, and awarded him damages of $8.1 million as compensation for his years of suffering.
His vindication as a victim, and not a villain, was a long time coming.
It was in 2002, during the early days of America’s longest — and still ongoing — war against Afghanistan that Omar Khadr, a 15-year-old native of Canada, was wounded and then captured, still alive, and packed off to Guantanamo Bay, one of a number of child soldiers whom the US, under the Bush/Cheney administration’s rule-free War on Terror, held in violation of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty that was signed by the US and that is thus part of US law. It declares that all children under the age of 18 captured while fighting in wars are to be offered “special protection” and treated as victims, not as combatants.
Continue to counterpunch.org article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/12/canada-apologizes-for-not-aiding-its-captive-citizen/
