About Khadr
Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was born in Toronto in 1986. In 1996, Khadr moved with his family to Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
By 2001, if not earlier, Khadr was living with militants in Afghanistan. While accompanying militants in a village in 2002, American soldiers visited the area and there was a firefight. Stories of what happened during the fight are often contradictory. What is known is that after the initial firefight, American soldiers were picking their way through the rubble when SFC Chris Speer was hit with a grenade and died. Shortly after, Khadr was shot twice and captured. Khadr has been accused of throwing the grenade.
After the exchange, Kadhr was airlifted to Bagram and received medical attention. Currently, Omar Kadhr is being held in extrajudicial detention by the United States government in Guantanamo Bay and remains the only Western citizen in the prison. Because he was only fifteen at the time of suspected grenade throwing, he is regularly referred to as a child soldier.
In my opinion the best Khadr backgrounder, with plenty of citations, is this pdf hosted by bringomarhome.ca. You can find out more about Khadr by looking at his Wikipedia page, CBC’s In Depth profile of Khadr, his profile on Human Rights First, his page on the Toronto Star website, or this Rolling Stone article.
Amnesty Canada’s blog on Security has good general information and updates.
