Even Omar Khadr’s flinty American military jailers are fed up with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s foot-dragging over bringing him home. Canada’s obtuse refusal to go to bat for one of our own has long been a national disgrace. Now it is irritating our key ally. It’s time to get him back.

Yet to the bitter end, the Harper government seems grimly determined to make a bungled cause célèbre of this wretched case.

In a plea deal in 2010 before a discredited Guantanamo Bay military tribunal Khadr, a Canadian, pleaded guilty to war crimes in connection with a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan that killed U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer. Just 15 at the time, Khadr has been recognized by the United Nations as a “child soldier,” recruited by his jihadist father. Instead of protection he got eight years, to be served at Gitmo.

As part of the deal Canada agreed to “favourably” consider taking him back to serve out his sentence here. On April 16, the U.S. defence secretary approved his transfer, no doubt expecting prompt action.

Ten weeks later the Americans are still waiting to hear back from Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ office. Ottawa is taking its sweet time mulling the U.S. request. To hear Khadr’s legal team tell it, this “stonewalling” is undermining American prosecutors’ efforts to cut deals with other alleged terrorists, to secure convictions and ultimately to empty Gitmo. Other prisoners look at Khadr’s go-nowhere case and wonder why they should play ball.

“The U.S. government is in a bad situation in negotiating other deals,” says Khadr’s lead U.S. military defence lawyer, Lt.-Col. Jon Jackson. “The Khadr effect is alive and well at Guantanamo Bay,” he said. “There’s a great deal of frustration on the U.S. side.”

Whatever one thinks of Khadr, he has spent a decade behind bars for his wrongdoing. That’s years longer than he would have spent in prison in Canada if he had been convicted as a young offender of first-degree murder, in a credible court.

“Omar has lived up to his part of his deal,” said his Canadian lawyer, John Norris. “The United States has lived up to its part of the deal. The only reason eight months after he became eligible to return to Canada (last October) that Omar still sits in a cell in Guantanamo is because the Canadian government continues to fail in its obligations toward him.” That pretty much sums it up.

From the start the Harper government has wilfully shirked its duty to stand up for a Canadian citizen who the Supreme Court of Canada and the United Nations both say was mistreated. Ottawa never objected to the abuse, criticized the prosecution or sought leniency. As Canada’s allies lobbied to free their nationals from Gitmo, the Harper government insisted, perversely and against all evidence, that “justice” was taking its course.

Now, in one last show of obduracy, Toews is letting a U.S.-approved transfer bid gather dust. Enough. Harper should honour the Gitmo deal and make the move. Now.

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