Mohamed Kohail

Twenty-three-year-old Mohamed Kohail, a Canadian citizen, is appealing his death sentence for killing Munzer Haraki in a schoolyard brawl in Saudi Arabia in January last year.  The appeal is due to be heard by June 7.  Kohail’s parents have nine witnesses who say that during the melee a stone fence collapsed, killing Haraki.  They have placed a video of the fight on Facebook, showing Haraki kicking Kohail in the head while being held down on the ground by another person.   It is claimed that a group of about 15 attacked the Kohail brothers Mohamed and Sultan and a friend, Mohana Ezzazt.

The Kohail family claims that the court heard from only one witness for the defense, while five appeared for the prosecution, including members of the group of attackers.  Exactly what happened at the trial is unclear, as family and even the lawyer were excluded from much of the trial.  Mohamed’s 17-year-old brother Sultan has been sentenced to 200 lashes in the same incident, and their friend Mohana Ezzat, like Mohamed, is under sentence to be beheaded.  

 

Sultan Kohail

The judge who found the three guilty and pronounced sentence will be the one hearing the appeal.  While Canada is seeking to have the death sentence set aside, its influence has been undermined to some degree.  In the past, it opposed any death sentence imposed on a Canadian citizen, but the Conservative government has strayed from that position in the case of a man convicted of murder in Montana.  The government argues that it will not interfere in the case of a fair trial in a democratic country.  Such a stand suggests that an appeal on Canada’s part casts aspersions on the sentencing country’s government and legal system. 

 

 

 

Preacher accused of child porn

Ayed Mejid, described in the Globe and Mail as a preacher and volunteer at mosques and schools, has been charged by police with possession of child pornography on his laptop. The charge followed frequent contacts from the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), which has tried to link him to the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF).  He had brought his laptop to CISIS to dispel any suspicions of the GIMF link.  The Front is a distributor of Islamist propaganda, including videos of actions in Iraq and Afghanistan in which Western soldiers are killed and jihadist video games.  

 

Mejid denies any connection to GMIF and says that the porn was planted by someone.

 

Terrorism in decline

Researchers at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver claim that terrorism is in decline.  In reaching that conclusion, they exclude acts of violence in places with open conflict, such as Darfur, Iraq, and Afghanistan. 

 

By their definition of terrorism, they found a 40% decrease since 2001.

 

Khadr 1, Canadian government 0

Khadr

Omar Khadr’s lawyers did not get everything that they wanted, but the Canadian government ended up with egg on its face—big time.  And not just the current Conservative minority government, as the events in question occurred during the previous Liberal hold on power.  On May 23, the Canadian Supreme Court gave Khadr’s lawyers limited access to documents pertaining to his case.  The documents to be released are reports from Foreign Affairs and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, based on their interrogations of Khadr in 2003 at Guantanamo. 

 

His lawyers wanted more, but they’ll have to settle for that right now.  The Canadian government, on the other hand, got a lot more than it wanted—a declaration by the Supreme Court that the interrogations made Canada complicit in illegal U.S. actions as “the conditions under which Mr. Khadr was held and liable for prosecution were illegal under both U.S. and international law.”  And to rub it in, the ruling was unanimous, nine to zero.

What the lawyers really wanted was documents from the United States to Canada describing events at the time of the attack on the ruins of the building in which Khadr and others were sheltered when someone in the building threw a grenade that killed an American soldier.  American authorities claim to have lost the report, so the lawyers tried to get the Canadian copy.  But wait: I have the solution.

Canada is not prepared to hand over the document because it would violate the confidential nature of diplomatic relations.  However, there is nothing to prevent Canada from sending the U.S. a copy of the document that they claim to have lost.  Then the lawyers can ask the military court at Guantanamo to order it.