Omar Khadr wants bail eased so he can fly to Toronto to visit family

TORONTO (NEWS 1130) – Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr is asking a Canadian court to ease his bail conditions to allow him to fly to Toronto to visit his family, The Canadian Press has learned.

Among other things, Khadr also wants to be rid of his electronic monitoring bracelet, arguing it’s embarrassing and intrusive, and his curfew eased.

“My release and reintegration into the community have been going great,” Khadr says in a supporting affidavit.

“I have not gotten into any trouble of any kind with the authorities.”

An Alberta judge granted Khadr bail May 7 pending his appeal in the US against his 2010 conviction for war crimes — including the murder of an American special forces soldier — by a widely discredited military commission at Guantanamo Bay.

He transferred to Canada in 2012 and remained incarcerated until winning bail and tasting freedom for the first time since his capture as a 15-year-old in Afghanistan in July 2002.

However, bail came with stringent conditions — including that he live with his lawyer Dennis Edney in Edmonton and not leave Alberta — except to stay at Edney’s vacation home in BC.

He was also required to communicate with his family — some of whom expressed pro-al-Qaida views in the past — only in English and under the Edneys’ supervision.

“I am now an adult and I think independently,” Khadr, 29, says in the document.

“Even if the members of my family were to wish to influence my religious or other views, they would not be able to control or influence me in any negative manner.”

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