Chronicle on Cuba - January 2006

Terrorism

January 5: Canadian government officials visited detained terrorism suspect Omar Khadr in December at the US Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. The "welfare visit" came in mid December, Foreign Affairs spokesman Rodney Moore said in an interview. It was the second time the Canadian government has been granted access to the lone Canadian being held at the tightly controlled American detention facility. (The Vancouver Sun, 5/1/06)

January 11: Civil rights lawyers and activists who have come to the US Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, to observe the military hearings against alleged terror suspects accuse the US administration of violating international law, and say the Canadian government hasn't done enough to protect 19-year-old Omar Khadr. The Toronto-born teenager faces a pre-trial hearing on charges that include murder, for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed an American medic in Afghanistan in July 2002. But critics question the legality of the military process set up by US President George W. Bush's administration to hear cases like Khadr's, and that of Hamza Ali al-Bahlul, a 39-year-old Yemeni accused of being an Al Qaeda propagandist. They say the military hearings should have been postponed until the US Supreme Court rules on their constitutionality. (The Toronto Star, 11/1/06)