Canada — Details of Omar Khadr Plea Agreement Released

The Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment (USG) has request­ed the assis­tance of the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment in imple­ment­ing the plea arrange­ment the USG has made with Omar Khadr. As part of this plea agree­ment, Khadr has admit­ted his guilt for the fol­low­ing crimes: mur­der in vio­la­tion of the law of war, attempt­ed mur­der in vio­la­tion of the law of war, con­spir­a­cy, pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al sup­port for ter­ror­ism, and spy­ing. The USG request­ed that Cana­da con­sid­er a request for trans­fer made by Khadr under exist­ing treaty arrange­ments for the trans­fer of offend­ers between the two countries. 

Were Khadr to be trans­ferred, the terms of his incar­cer­a­tion would be sub­ject to exist­ing Cana­di­an laws per­tain­ing to cus­tody and con­di­tion­al release. The USG under­stands that the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment has no author­i­ty to man­date terms of Khadr’s incar­cer­a­tion if he were to return to Cana­da. These terms are deter­mined by the Nation­al Parole Board, which is an inde­pen­dent admin­is­tra­tive tribunal. 

In these cir­cum­stances, the USG under­stands and acknowl­edges that Khadr would be eli­gi­ble to apply for parole in Cana­da after serv­ing one-third of his sen­tence, and may be eli­gi­ble for statu­to­ry release in Cana­da after serv­ing two-thirds of the time remain­ing after his return to Canada. 

The USG has indi­cat­ed the urgency with which it has raised this mat­ter with the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment and ful­ly under­stands the con­se­quences of the appli­ca­tion of Cana­di­an law to Khadr’s prison terms if he is trans­ferred to Cana­da, includ­ing the rules regard­ing eli­gi­bil­i­ty for parole and statu­to­ry release. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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